| Woodcraft |
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Projects |
'I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.' I specialise in green woodworking, particularly chairs, and adapt the design of each chair to suit the character of the person who will sit in it. Every chair comes named with an individual 'chairography', describing its origins, process of construction and meaning. I am also currently engaged in a project to invent 'empathy furniture', which encourages people to see the world from another person's perspective. Following is a sample of my chairs. * 'Ishi' Chairography Ishi was made by hand using traditional green woodworking methods, with unseasoned timber from Clissett Wood, Herefordshire. The newly felled ash is cleaved, sawn, then shaped using a draw knife on a shaving horse. The back legs and slats are steam-bent and the whole chair assembled without glue, using the natural shrinkage of the wood to produce tight joints. The seat is woven from the bast (inner bark) of a wych elm, a technique adopted from Native Americans. The design is based on chairs made by Phillip Clissett in the nineteenth century and developed by contemporary green woodworker Mike Abbott. Clisset was a Herefordshire craftsman whose work was made famous by Ernest Gimson of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who copied his designs. I named this chair 'Ishi' after a man believed to be the last Native American to have lived most of his life completely outside European American culture. He emerged from Californian mountain country in 1911, and lived at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California until his death in 1916. Ishi was a bridge between two worlds. Similarly, this chair emerged out of 'the wildwood' and acts as a link back to an older world of traditional woodcraft, ancient woodland and slow time. * 'One for Solitude' 'One for Solitude' creation photos * 'Mother's Gaze' |
© 2009 Roman Krznaric |