[MD] The Value of a Chair

[MarshaV]

on chairs...   


   "The ashram was simple, sober rather than severe, and
seemed more like a college than a convent.  We crossed a small
patio with two withered lawns and two small trees.  There was 
an open door, and we entered a small room.  There we found
about a dozen people sitting on chairs in a semicircle around
a woman who was seated on the floor.  She was around fifty,
dark-skinned, with loose black hair, deep and liquid eyes, 
thick, well-defined lips, wide nostrils as though made for deep 
breathing, her body full and powerful, her hands eloquent. 
She was dressed in a dark-blue cotton sari.  Receiving us with 
a smile -- she had known Raja Rao for a long time -- she gestured 
to us to take a seat.  The conversation, interrupted by our arrival, 
continued.  She spoke in Hindi, but would answer a foreigner 
in English.  As she spoke, she played with some oranges in a 
basket next to her.  She soon looked at me, smiled, and threw 
an orange at me, which I caught and held on to.  I realized that 
this was a game, and that the game contained some sort of 
symbolism.  Perhaps she wanted to say that what we call 'life' 
is a game and nothing more.  Ananda began to speak in English 
and said: "I am frequently asked who I am  And I answer you:  I 
am a puppet, the puppet of each one of you.  I am what you want 
me to be.  In reality, I am nobody.  A woman like any other.  But 
the puppet whom you call Ananda the Mother is your fabrication.  
I am your toy . . . Ask me whatever you like, but first I must say 
that the answer will not be mine, but rather your own.  It is like a 
game in which each person answers himself.""






On Jun 13, 2010, at 1:31 PM, John Carl wrote:

> 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.
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