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| Nina Chair. Photo. Tib Shaw. |
One of my inspirations for the grant was the desire to have relaxing, uninterrupted, intentional meals similar to the meals I would experience while staying with friends in Northern Europe. Even the simplest of meals weren’t rushed. Mealtime was more about conversation, food was like the side dish.
One component to having a long meal is to have comfortable seating. I’ve always been interested in seating and while on a trip in 2013 visiting Willie Sundqvist I was inspired to make chairs. In his kitchen were simple blue chairs that he said where over 150 years old and had never been repaired. When you sat in it, it didn’t give; it made me think about our disposable society and how things are no longer made to last, stand the test of time, or even be comfortable. So for the last three years I have been studying chair making and have wanted to make that chair with a comfortable seat (or called the “sit”). To start understanding chair joinery, the first chair I made was the classic American Windsor, from there I worked on my own designs and made the chair I currently call the “Norma”.
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| Norma Chair Photo, Tib Shaw. |
In 2015 I saw an opportunity to study with Beth Moen at Säterglänten on making a chair starting with a log, “Log to Chair” was the title. I signed up as soon as I found out about the class, another opportunity to study time tested joinery. Not only did I want to learn how to make this Swedish style of chair, I wanted to learn from Beth because she is an incredible craftsperson.
Säterglänten is a school in Sweden that teaches hand-craft or sloyd. I had been there once before to take a class with Jögge Sundqvist and knew from prior travel that shipping anything home was expensive, especially anything large like a chair.
The first thing I did when I got to central Sweden was to find a “loppis” - a Swedish version of our garage sale. I was looking for the largest suitcase I could find to use as my luggage for the trip home. I traveled with only a backpack and so adding a suitcase wouldn’t have an extra charge on my return flight home with a checked bag.
The first day of class was spent designing our chair based off a century old design Beth had shown us. I should note that all classes at Säterglänten are taught in Swedish and I had to use the metric system to lay-out and build it, I actually found it easier than using our system. I also learned to draw dual perspectives,where front view and side view are overlapping on the same page. It was trippy but once I figured it out, it was a way of checking to see if you made each perspective correct. Besides esthetics and strength, I had one more design consideration - how to fit all the parts in this suitcase -Ikea style.
The next three days were all about hand joinery, steam bending, and fika, lots of work using only hand tools, except a bandsaw to rough out the parts. Many of us worked until 9:00 in the evening just to stay on task but by early afternoon on Friday I had my chair into the suitcase.
