Earlywood: How We ‘Met’ John Brown

Publisher’s note: Good morning. We have another Earlywood for you, an excerpt from the thousands of pieces I’ve worked on since 1996. Sometimes, it’s from a magazine article. Or a book. Or (in this case) two blog posts published in 2016. Many of these entries have been updated with modern context or a new perspective. Enjoy!

My first Welsh stick chair. It’s not much like John Brown’s chairs, but it was a start.

In 1996, I was hired as the managing editor at Popular Woodworking, a struggling second-tier woodworking magazine that focused on publishing project plans (17 Must-build Plans Inside! Build an Alien on a Swing!). At the time I was hired, I was a nascent hand-tool woodworker (not by choice, really) with my grandfather’s hand tools plus a Craftsman table saw that seemed determined to shred me.

Before being hired by the magazine, I’d been building tables, chests, benches and bookshelves, but what I really wanted to build was chairs. Chairs are, to me, functional sculpture. Building a…