About the Bulls%!t Chair

The comb-back chair I designed for “Build a Chair from Bullshit,” doesn’t share DNA with any of my previous chairs. It is from a different place and time. Here’s the story behind it.

First, like in many questionable movies, I need to squirt out a quick recap. (Hey, at least I’m not subjecting you to voiceover narration. Or – dammit – is that all a blog is?) The stick chairs I’ve been making since 2011 all derive from one photo. Yup. That’s how I work. I get a chubby for a photo, and I can build chairs from it for 13 years.

Here’s the photo.

The image is from “Welsh Country Furniture” by Richard Bebb (Shire, 1994). I don’t know anything more about this chair than you do. I don’t know its dimensions, and I don’t have any other photos of the chair from different angles.

But that’s how I like to work. I would never try to make a copy of this chair (or any chair, except for one). I just like this photo of this chair and what it communicates:

1. This is a compact chair. The comb isn’t insanely h…