Meet Arthur Lewis: Luthier, Chairmaker, Gardener

I visit Wales every couple years to study old chairs and visit friends. Seeing the antique chairs I adore in their proper context – the light, the structures around them, even their placement in a home – makes me a better chairmaker.

During this trip, my fourth, I’ve found it’s also helpful to understand the Welsh people in context – how they work, where they live and the objects that are important to them.

This visit, Chris Williams introduced me to Arthur Lewis of St Clears, one of those vanishing people who is capable of doing almost anything with his hands. He and his wife live in an old cottage he restored from the bare walls. He restored the flagstone floors, the low ceiling beams and the ladder to the sleeping loft.

But unlike a museum recreation, this place is real life. The rooms are comfortably lived-in, and filled with warm light and steady heat from the hearth. You can smell the hundreds of good meals and animated conversations that have been enjoyed inside the stone walls.

If you don’t feel comfortable here, then maybe you are a true hermit.

Arthur's old shop in the hillside.

Arthur built his first workshop here directly into the hill rising out his back door, a bit Hobbit-like. With a pickaxe, shovel and wheelbarrow, Arthur single-handedly dug out the hill, filling six skips (dumpsters) with soil and rock. He built the shop walls in stone. Constructed the door and the window. And worked there for many years.

It’s a remarkable small shop with a few small machines, lots of hand tools and lumber stacked in the rafters above.

He built his son an 8'-dining table here, despite the fact that it would barely fit inside the shop walls.

Recently, Arthur was able to acquire a small building attached to his home and fix that up into a slightly larger shop, which is where he works today.

I first became aware of Arthur’s chairmaking via Chris Williams.

“I’ve always known of Arthur as someone on the fringe of my circle of friends,” Chris said. “Everyone who wanted work that was sympathetic to an old piece would use him. We crossed paths quite a lot. But in the last 10 years, we’ve become really good mates.

“He’s one of the few people I can talk about with naturally grown timbers in chairmaking.”

And that’s one of the reasons I’m in Arthur’s shop – to look at his chairs and for Chris to deliver some curved branches. Arthur’s chairs look like the ancient chairs – the right shapes, materials and workmanship. But Arthur leaves them basically bare to allow them to age naturally with wood smoke and constant use.