[MD] The Value of a Chair

[John Carl]

A couple of months ago, when I started working in the shop at Soleil Farm, I
was given a task that seemed a bit frivolous to me.  There was this chair
that Gaetane wanted me to fix up for Allen's birthday.  His birthday was
weeks and weeks away, so there wasn't any rush or anything.  The idea was
that in my idle moments or if I got hung up on a project, I'd fix this
pathetic looking wooden chair.

It had a pretty straightforward design.  Four legs attached crosswise under
the wooden seat and a small wooden back painted in a fading and chipped
purple.  All on my own,  I wouldn'a bothered with it for a minute.  The seat
had come apart into its constuent three sections, and they were individually
warped and twisted so badly I didn't see it as an easy task to get them back
together and straightened out and reattached to the cross-members of the
legs.  I went and talked to Bob about it.  Bob Beams.

I've known Bob for more than 10 years now, and he's pretty much the best
wood crafter I know.  Everything I learned about peeling poles and making
stairs outta trees, I learned working for Bob.  Before he got into the log
beam business, he used to go around the country buying antique furniture and
restoring it and reselling it.  So I figured Bob would definitely let me
know if the chair was fixable.  He said yes, gave me some ideas, and I took
it back to the shop to work on in my spare time.

First, it had to be completely dissassembled, to get the seat back together
with clamps and glue, and second of all to get at the legs and crossmembers
so I could sand them down and refinish.  With a little sanding and
chiseling, the seat went back together and I was able to clamp it about
half-way to its original flatness, but the bottom was just too warped to fit
the structure.   In the end, I actually used one of my favorite tools - one
not often recommended for furniture repair - my Stihl electric chainsaw.
Once you get the hang of it, you'd be surprised how useful a good electric
chainsaw can be.  What you have is basically a planing grinder, that when
wielded with a deft touch, can quickly remove wood from just about any
angle.  The rounded tip makes it simple to cup out joints for nice tight
fits and what I used it for on the chair was straightening out the warpage
on the bottom of the chairs, so it'd sit flat on the leg cross members and
sure enough, it worked like a charm.  I got the chair in shape structurally
and then sat in it and saw what Gaetane meant when she told me Alan said it
was the most comfortable chair he'd ever sat in.  Something about the curves
and where the small back hits you in the small of your back... it's just
perfect.  It seems to hold you in an upright and comfortable posture.

This, underneath appearances, was a quality chair.  It had some sort of
small medallion from the manufacturer embossed in it.  Obviously not made in
China.  And from it's unornamented style, I'd guess it was made in the 50s
or early 60s when that style was popular.



I got more enthusiastic.  Did a more careful sanding job.  Picked out a
golden oak stain for the seat and  a darker, reddish  mahogany for the
legs.  I decided that since there was sentimental value associated with it,
I'd leave the back in its original chipped purple.

Now I don't know much about "Craftsmanship", as a skill or attribute.  All
the word signifies to me is that you take some time.  Usually a framer or
rough carpenter such as myself doesn't spend much time fiddling around with
decorative gee-gaws or fit and finish.  We look for good, solid structure,
plain and simple, and let other people decorate and paint the filigree.

So I never viewed any part of my task as anything special.  Like I said, I
mostly worked on the chair when I didn't have a more important task at hand,
or wanted a mindless task to occupy me while thinking my own thoughts -
usually about the MoQ!  So the value I put into the chair didn't seem that
extraordinary.

Alan's birthday came around, as we were enjoying our weekly meal together.
Gaetane was in the kitchen, after lunch, getting the cake ready and I said I
had to go check on something, and went and got the chair and put it in
Allen's office, which is right off the entrance and thus hidden from his
view in the dining room.  Gaetane completely surprised him; she'd told him
it was MY birthday and he was supposed to be keeping me busy for my
surprise, so the look on his face when he realized that the cake and candles
were actually for him was one of delight.  I like Alan a lot.  He reminds me
a lot of one of my best friends, Chris - who went to Burning Man with me and
is also a Ph.d and is also interested in biochemistry, pharmacology and
hallucinogenics.  Allen is much older than me tho, and actually lived
through the sixties in San Francisco and even joined a kind of monastery he
refers to as The Brethren, a mix of Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic theologians
who took spirituality and metaphysics pretty seriously I guess.

It seems this group had tried to open a chapter in Chicago, and it hadn't
quite succeeded.  When they were folding the chapter up, Alan asked if he
could keep the chair he'd gotten so used to sitting in while meditating.
And through the years, he'd kept it, even long after it seemed ruined beyond
repair.

I didn't know about this when I was working on it.  I only found out the
story on his birthday when I said to him after we'd finished our cake (lemon
cake) and he'd opened his other present (a ZZ Top CD - Alan is a pretty good
guitarists and loves to jam on the electric guitar) I led him into his
office.

He stood there for a minute, not quite seeing what his present was and then
he saw the chair and gasped.  I thought he seemed pleased, but he buried his
face in his hands and didn't say anything for about a minute, just stared
with his hands over his mouth, his eyes glistening and in a choked voice on
the edge of breaking down, said, "I thought it was gone forever."   And then
told us the story behind the chair and how much it meant.

I got a whole lot of thanks, which I deferred a bit by pointing out that
hey, I WAS on the clock when I was working on it... but I must admit its
awfully gratifying when one's work is appreciated that deeply.  It's a
payoff that doesn't count in dollars and I'm hoping I can find that more and
more in today's economy because dollars seem to be in pretty short supply
these days.

And when my daughter sent me her paper on art and image, and ended it with
the rhetorical question - What is the value of a chair?.

Well, I just had to answer.