The Stick Chair Book

By Christopher Schwarz Most woodworkers think it would be easier to grow a third arm than to build a chair. From the outside, it seems like you need to harvest special wood from the forest, buy a bunch of exotic tools, master a lot of crazy angles, and learn high-tolerance joinery to make a chair that is comfortable, strong and approaches sculpture. The truth is that everyday woodworkers – farmers, amateurs and people in other trades – made wonderful chairs using a handful of common woodworking tools and whatever wood was available: dry, wet, soft, hard or the branches pulled from a tree. “The Stick Chair Book” explores the craft of these “hedge carpenters” or dabblers who built chairs for the everyday home. The chairs they made weren’t designed to impress the neighbors – they were designed to be comfortable, stout and (if you have a good eye) nice to look at. After 18 years of building vernacular stick chairs and studying historical examples in the U.K., Europe and North America, auth