Brettstuhls underway

another in my Craft Genealogy series

next brettstuhl underway

I was thinking today about how I used to choose a new project, back when I was first learning woodworking. At that point, all my shop work was book-based, or print-based I guess. Fine Woodworking magazine was a big part of the equation. And that’s probably where I heard about most of the books I was reading, although I know I spent time in the public library too. But their woodworking books were fairly pedestrian. Which suited me just fine because I was totally devoid of skills. I remember scrounging boards here and there before I knew enough to venture into a lumberyard- an intimidating place when you’re new to it. And I’ve told many times how FWW published Alexander’s book Make a Chair from a Tree, and how that helped my direction get some focus. Then meeting Jennie Alexander and Drew Langsner, and on and on. Then 30 years of concentrating on studying museum collections and making my versions/copies of them. 

But when I started out, I never looked at old furniture, not knowingly anyway. I can’t remember when I first studied in any detail a piece of old furniture with an eye toward making a copy of it. One does stand out in memory - a friend’s mother had a small paneled chest in tulip poplar. Single horizontal panels between wide rails and square stiles. I made my version of it, complete with hardware-store brass hinges. But I didn’t measure the original that I recall... all that sort of work came a couple years later, starting the winter of 1989/90. 

a brettstuhl; 2021

This week I began a new chair (and a video about making it) - one of the German/Swiss/Austrian/French/ etc “board chairs” - I usually call it a “brettstuhl” - the German name for it. My limited knowledge of these chairs is decidedly second-hand. I’ve never studied a surviving example in person. I’ve barely ever been in the same room as one. A few years back Chris Schwarz, Rudy Everts and Klaus Skrudland sent me photos of some they saw while crawling around Germany and elsewhere. Being chairmakers, they were looking at the kind of details I would look at myself. Otherwise I’ve skimmed the internet looking at photos from antiques-dealers and read the little that’s been published on them in the American museum world. 

It bothered me that I was making these chairs without having extensively studied period examples - until today I remembered that’s what I used to do - so now I’m off the hook. The 2nd post I wrote on this blog back in June

https://peterfollansbeejoinerswork.substack.com/p/three-chairs

included some of my background with these chairs and how I came to be making them - through the influence of Drew Langsner and Daniel O’Hagan.