Learning new old ways

Making a Windsor chair with Elia Bizzarri

post & rung chair mortise & tenon disassembled

Six years ago I was sorting through Jennie Alexander’s shop after her death and out in a storage building were boxes of chair parts. Not chairs she’d made but antiques’ fragments that she’d collected over the years. While I was fascinated by them and knew they were important, I also knew I had neither the time nor the space to house them and use them. But I knew the one person who did - Elia Bizzarri. Elia knew JA from when he was a teenager making the rounds to study and learn green woodworking, particularly chairmaking. And years later, Elia had visited JA specifically to study these chair parts. So I connected him and the family members sorting the house and he made arrangements to pick up the parts during one of his trips through the Baltimore area. 

spoon bitted mortise, notched tenon

Then a few years ago Elia embarked on a project to write a book about how to make a Windsor chair in period fashion. Or something close to it. https://handtoolwoodworking.com/category/built-for-speed-book-project/

This project interests me in many ways. Back in the late 1980s early 1990s when I learned Windsor chairmaking from Curtis Buchanan - I just followed Curtis’ instructions and plans. Bore this mortise at this angle along this line. Though I lived in New England where there were plenty of period Windsors to study - I barely looked at them and certainly never studied one. It wasn’t until I got fully involved in 17th century oak furniture that I learned how to analyze a period piece of furniture with an eye toward understanding the processes involved in making it. And reproducing it.