The Ubiquitous Adirondack Chair

A couple of months ago Saskatchewan based wood artist Michael Hosaluk invited me to submit some work for an exhibition he was curating titled " Chairisms".. Michael sent out a hundred invitations to artist across the globe.  He wanted us to submit sketches, drawings, renderings and essays.  I submitted some sketches of original works as well as my thoughts on my favorite chair, below

The Ubiquitous Adirondack Chair

It’s been nearly Eight years now since I was given a bunch of old pine plank flooring that came out of a house on Cape Cod that was being renovated. I was working at the Worcester Center for Crafts in Worcester Massachusetts when a gentleman came into the wood studio and said he had a bunch of old floorboards that he would like to give away. The boards came out of a Cape Cod house from the 1800’s. They were of random widths and lengths and had nail holes throughout. This was very generous of him but they weren’t really good for much in the way of fine furniture. I thanked him and he told me that he and his family had just recently renovated the house and because of business were now moving to Austin Texas. They loved their old home and were sad to leave it. He wanted to make sure the boards would go to good use and thought someone at the center could use them. He asked if we could send him a picture of the end result.

The old boards sat around the wood studio for a couple of years. Once in a while I would haul them out, dust them off and wonder what I would make with them. They were beautiful as objects themselves. They were finished with a varnish on one side that was peeling and was a deep amber color and the other side was a rich grey. The boards were streaked, stained by the old square head nails. I couldn’t imagine running the boards through the planer. I didn’t want to take away the old varnish. I also didn’t think they would survive, they were so old and brittle.

A year later I was working in the wood studio with a student of mine. It was an open studio and we were working on our own projects. I noticed David had brought in a bunch of templates. I asked him what he was making and he said he was going to make a pair of Adirondack chairs for a friend. At that moment I realized what I was going to use the boards for. I had always wanted to make a pair of Adirondack chairs myself and these boards of random widths and thickness would be perfect. As a maker we are always trying to create and design something new, meaningful, innovative and note worthy. I have numerous sketches of chair designs in my sketchbook but I can never design a chair that speaks, never mind, screams of a certain purpose and function like that of the Adirondack chair. The sole purpose of this chair by means of its design is to sit back stop what you’re doing and just relax.

I made the chairs out of the old pine plank floorboards. The boards with their varying widths and thickness worked well for the chairs. In the end the chairs looked like they came off of a porch from a house from the 1800’s. If it weren’t for the drywall screws I used you would never know.

As a designer and maker I feel a little silly submitting these chairs. I should submit something of my own design but these chairs I made out of the old boards hold so much meaning and so much history. These chairs now sit in front of my studio and I often sit in them after a hard day at work. I think how the person who first made them must have felt after he made them, proudly admiring his hand work and sitting in them relaxing after a hard day at work.

I often think about the man who through his random act of generosity, and who’s name escapes me now has become part of my family’s history. I wonder how his family is in Austin. These chairs also make me think of the student whose templates I used to make these chairs. I think of my friend Mike in New Jersey who ran into the chairs with a snowplough because I had left them outside all winter. They survived. I grew up in Ontario Canada and spent most of my summers at my friend Dave Bawden’s cottage. I remember sitting on the dock on a pair of chairs very similar to these. Back home in Ontario we call these Muskoga chairs named after a Lake District in Ontario.

No matter what you call them or where you are in the world these chairs have become ubiquitous. We hardly notice them, they are omnipresent. Every store sells a variation of them, some in plastic, some in wood. Akiko Busch, author of " The Uncommon Life of Common Objects" published by Metropolis Magazine and D.A.P Inc uses an image of an Adirondack chair on the book cover.

I love these chairs. I now carve out my own family history with them. I sit in them with my son and read stories. I sit in them next to my partner Liesl and watch the sun set. I hope one day I can design and build a chair that will have so much meaning.