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Volume 2, Number 1 January 2009 
Welcome to the reboot, 2009! We now leave behind us the troubles and triumphs of 2008. May the new year hold the best for you and yours.  
 
This month The News from New England Modern concerns the entwined lives of people and objects, three in particular: a Windsor armchair I made in 1984; a shop stool; and the tin under the woodstove in my shop.
History, Old Age, and Wear
 
Armchair Number 5 Chair #5

This armchair returned to my shop a year ago last fall for a tuneup. My client had rented her home, furnished, and some kids left their mark--in fact, several marks. The soft pine seat had taken a half-dozen little hammer blows, and a corner had been cracked off.
 
I repaired the break, but my client decided against having me resurface the seat, which would have undone twenty-five years of natural aging.
To her, the button-sized dents tagged a mere episode toward the beginning
of an heirloom chair's long life. Otherwise, there was nothing to do: every joint was as sound as the day
it was made. The paint had been polished by use, and worn away completely on the handholds. The underlying ash wood had a rich amber tone.
 
When work leaves the shop, the edges will never again be quite so clean and crisp, the fresh high polish will fade, and surfaces and joints will have to absorb whatever comes their way. In the beginning, there's an investment in the close work that gives a piece long life, and the graceful lines that invite attention and care. However
reluctant a maker may be to let go, in the end, time adds value.
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Shop Stool
 
Another object of roughly the same age as Windsor armchair Number 5 never left the shop. It's a frame of plain, shaved hickory sticks with a hickory bark seat. Any low seat takes hard landings, but the frame of this one remains solid. The supple, leathery stuff we wove is now so rigid that a few cracks where it turns around the rungs have no apparent effect on the sturdiness of the seat: the weave is one. The color, wear, and polish imparted by time are pure old hickory.
Shop stool
Old Tin 
 
Object number three is the galvanized sheet metal protecting the floor around and under the woodstove in my shop. I got it thirty years ago from Oliver W., the brother of a local sawyer. Oliver got it from barrels that originally contained poly pale resin manufactured by Hercules Powder Company. The company also made the dynamite used to blast a roadway for the Massachusetts Turnpike through the Berkshire hills. Oliver's land abutted the pike, and in his way he made the best of a bad situation, cutting open empty barrels acquired through his proximity to the road construction and flattening the sheets to use on the roofs of outbuildings. I had similar needs, Oliver had more than enough, and we made a deal. A few pieces ended up nailed over rough-sawed pine floorboards by the woodstove. Over the years, firewood tossed up through a hatch from the floor below pocked the metal surface, while foot traffic pressed the tin into the shape of the boards and the spaces between them, and polished the stuff to a pewter sheen.
 

Tin floor 
 
Sipping my tea on the stool by the stove, staring at the fire and the floor, these passages come to mind, the thrifty old Yank, the gouge through his property that brought incessant noise forever after, things made simply or elaborately, by timeless methods, of materials that grow outside my door, other things salvaged, all with their histories displayed for any who know them.



Made to Last
 
In a time of profound uncertainty, an investment in furniture made to last for generations has enduring value. At New England Modern we produce furniture, architectural woodwork, landscape woodwork, and accessories. Commissions are always welcome, and we can ship just about anything anywhere.
 
Please visit our website, www.newenglandmodern.com, to see the full range of what we make.
 
And stop by our showroom! It's at 70 Railroad Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and although we spend most of our time making things, we're there every Saturday 11 - 4, or any time by appointment. Call the showroom Saturdays at 413-717-2530, or call us at the shop, 413-528-9937.
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