In the 1930s, the Head of the School of Furniture at the Birmingham College of Arts and Crafts, Mr A Gregory, wrote two books about woodworking: The Art of Woodworking and Furniture Making, and (shown above) Constructive Woodwork for Schools¹. I bought second-hand copies years ago when I first got interested in woodwork but I hadn’t looked at them in a long time until I got a request for a chair suitable for a young child.
Constructive Woodwork for Schools contained a simple design for exactly what was needed.
I was amused (and, as things progressed, slightly irritated) by Gregory’s remark ‘It it is not a very difficult piece of work’. He’s right, I suppose, in that it’s largely mortise and tenon joinery. But there are 24 of these joints to be cut and adjusted and, because the front of the chair is wider than the back, they’re not all at right angles. The business of fitting the arms and making the doubly curved top rail isn’t completely straightforward either. I certainly didn’t find making this chair a breeze, and I should have thought it would have been a fairly taxing task for a schoolboy. Or perhaps I’m underestimating the standard of woodworking 80 years ago?
Here are the individual components and the chair assembled dry. The wood is English oak.
And here it is glued up and finished with a couple of coats of Danish oil. The seat is woven out of seagrass.
Happily, the client seems satisfied.
¹ I assumed that these two books would have been long out of print but, in fact, new copies are still available and there are lots of reasonably priced second-hand copies on Abe Books too. The books may be a little dated in their approach but I thought that they were well worth reading. I recommend them, particularly The Art of Woodworking and Furniture Making, to anyone wanting to develop their skills in designing and making wooden furniture, especially if they’re attracted to work in the tradition of Edward Barnsley and the Arts and Crafts movement.
Finely Strung 