Spring 2008
Made In Vermont: Seat of Knowledge
By Pierre Home-Douglas
Photographed by Stefan Hard
It took a degree from MIT and a stint in the corporate world for David Sawyer to realize that modern engineering wasn't for him. "I wasn't too enthused by the way big corporations work," he says in a sonorous voice worthy of NPR. "It takes too long to see the results of whatever you're dreaming up."
"I would have probably made a pretty good engineer in the 19th century — where you actually thought up things, tried them out and did it all."
So Sawyer began making wooden pitchforks, and discovered that they were an excellent bread-and-butter item to sell at craft fairs. He could produce one in less than an hour with just a shaving horse, drawknife, steambox and a small hand tool called a spokeshave. "I could get them done before people got disinterested," he says wryly. He figures he made thousands of wooden pitchforks.
Sawyer also started making ladderbacks — a chair with two upright posts connected by horizontal slats — and then advanced to the more demanding Windsor chairs.
Sawyer didn't start making Windsors until he was in his 40s. Today, more than two decades and 600 chairs later, Sawyer continues to make the classic chairs, mostly by hand in his shop on an old farm in South Woodbury.
"I'm sort of a minimalist and they are sort of a minimalist use of wood," Sawyer says. "Take eight or 10 pounds of wood, and make something beautiful and useful and strong."
Windsor chairs were first built in Britain, although the origin of the name is unclear. "One of the legends," Sawyer explains, "is that one of the King Georges saw these chairs at a country fair and he commented that he wanted some of them for his home in Windsor."
The chairs made their way to America in the 1700s, and it wasn't long before local woodworkers took notice. "People here decided they could do just as well as having someone ship them across the ocean," Sawyer says. So began the long process of refinement and improvement, including the use of wood native to North America and not found in Britain, such as hickory. Sawyer still draws on traditional designs, many going back 200 years or more.
Sawyer is so committed to his craft that he teaches others, at nominal cost, how to build the chairs and continue their heritage (see sidebar). He also feels that a style of chair dating back centuries still has a future.
"Maybe some people are so used to factory-made stuff, they have no idea that there is anything else," he says. "But there is always a market for good, handmade stuff. And I hope there always will be."
Learn from the master
Far from guarding his stash of knowledge, David Sawyer will gladly help you learn to build a Windsor chair. He typically works with students who already have some chair-making experience, but for the price of the wood students can keep the chair they build — and the knowledge of how to build more when they return home.
Randall Henson, a former president of the Guild of Vermont Furnituremakers, took one of Sawyer's courses and looks back fondly on the week he spent with him.
"It was just him and me, very personal, one-on-one," Henson says. "We would have lunch at his dining table, sitting in his Windsors . . . He is very willing to share his vast knowledge with anyone who is willing to listen and learn."
Sawyer says that one of the pleasures of teaching students is what they teach him in return. "Ever heard of ischial tuberosities?" he asks, before explaining that they are bony projections of the pelvis. Sawyer says he had long been aware of Windsors' reputation for comfort, but it took a student who happened to be a doctor to explain just how anatomically appropriate the sculpted seat of a Windsor chair really is.
"You learn all kinds of things from people," the teacher says.
David Sawyer's shop is located at 556 King Pond Road in South Woodbury; please call ahead to arrange a visit. (802) 456-8836
To purchase: Side chairs cost about $700, arm chairs $1,000 and up, and rockers and settees $1,500 and up.