Wild and Woody

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Photoes by brownie harris Illustrations by kay holmes stafford

Twig furniture blends the growing tree with the personality of the builder By Daniel Mack

I capture the power of saplings. . . and want some chairs to dance.

As the tree grows, so the chair goes. That's the almost magical transformation that accounts, at least in part, for the increasing popularity of rustic furniture-chairs, sofas, even beds made from full saplings or branches, often with the bark left on. For the city dweller, such furniture carries with it a touch of nature. For those in the country, it's yet another gift from the nearby forest. And for those who like handwork, making these functional sculptures can turn into a challenging and rewarding craft.

I make my living designing and building rustic furniture. Occasionally I teach others to do so and have yet to find a student who can't create a satisfying object. It is a truly democratic craft, both primitive and immediate. As such, it doesn't really have as much to do with sticks and twigs as it does with the people who put them together.

The main roots of rustic furniture making in America reach to the so-called Romantic Movement that flourished in the nineteenth century and was marked by the attitude that contact with nature had a soothing, spiritually healing effect. Summering in the mountains was seen as the clear antidote for the debilitating, relentless, confusing stress of ur ban industrial living. As a result, the "Great Camps" of the Adirondacks and the various resorts and retreats in the Smokies, Appalachians, and Catskills sprang up. Their architecture and furnishings reflected the romantic notion of intimacy with nature. More practically, however, the use of native building materials kept building costs down while also employing local craftspeople. Finally, both builders and users found something immensely pleasing in this crude but beautiful furniture.

MAKING RUSTIC FURNITURE

Many of these characteristics contribute to the appeal of creating contemporary rustic furniture today. There's true excitement in finding, cutting, and drying just the right piece of wood. There's also a delightful bewilderment in the many choices the rustic furniture builder faces in design, assembly, and finishing.

You make what you are. Because simple rustic furniture can be built with a minimum of formal woodworking skill, it could be said to be a translucent and sometimes transparent window into its maker. Every workshop I teach reaffirms this. The selection of woods, and the arrangement, the assembly, and even the intended use of a rustic chair tells more about the person who made it than it does about trees or furniture. A rigid person is likely to produce a straight conventional piece, while a more flexible one will explore the possibilities of wood shapes more freely.