Chairs

I am basically a chairmaker…  Before learning to make chairs, I bought old ones, found them on the street and always had many more around than I "needed"… Even now, I still acquire chairs and "fix" them with rustic parts.

I make a few different kinds of Dining Chairs, Stools and Side Chairs which are comfortable to sit in for long meals as well as pleasing to look at around the table. These dining chairs refer to both the trees and the history of furniture with legs and backs which look like tree drawings from a formal design book.

But all chairs are for more than sitting. Chairs are part of the story of life… They witness events. They become part of Memory and Family History.

So, I make chairs which tell stories. These I call "Memory Chairs"… to convey the explicit role of chairs in life… I appropriate flat, curved and worn objects which approximate and replace the traditional milled parts of a chair. I try to make the hidden life of the chair more evident.

The Memory Series...
"The Chairmakers Chair by Daniel Mack is constructed of raw tree limbs and tools and is a kind of monument to all those nameless craftspeople who have made chairs across the centuries. It conjures up a thousand workshops, where hands and tools transformed raw materials into objects of use and of pleasure. Its rickety structure, its fragility, its cobbled materials make it impractical, the first step towards prestige technology. It also makes us smile, not at the chair but at ourselves. We know that even the most skillful craftspeople among us couldn't shape this wonderfully absurd object. Its elusive secret isn't craft; it's the imagination of the maker."
-----Pete Hamill Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection. Abrams 1996