If I can build a chair, you can build a chair

This, according to a lot of people who know a lot about building chairs.

This winter I took a chair-making class at a favorite local watering hole (a bar, but during the day). Ten-ish of us, hammering incessantly, making a terrific racket, built Enzo Mari’s Sedia 1. It was so much fun. (Thanks, Todd!)

Mari’s Sedia 1, in his own home. This photo was taken for and published in Apartamento and the accompanying interview is really excellent.

Mari, an Italian industrial and furniture designer, was famous for being extremely grumpy, especially about the frivolities of the design world. A Marxist who grew up extremely poor, he was interested in furniture that is inexpensive, pleasant for the furniture-maker to build, and, ideally, existing outside the capitalist system. In this way, making your own furniture is a kind of freedom—to keep your cash, to step away from a naturally depleting system, and to have fun while doing it. Thanks Enzo¹!

Whenever you start a new thing, invariably, you have to answer the question: ‘Cool, what’s it all about?’ I have been struggling with a one-liner to explain whatever this newsletter/zine is. {{Taking suggestions, feel free to leave a comment!}} But, I think it might have something to do with what Mari was after—taking things off the assembly line, or at the very least, out of the algorithm, making the things around you to the extent that you can. And in that way, building meaning in and around your environment. Something like that?

Which is why I’m especially excited to share this resource with you: Self Assembly, a website with free, simple-to-complete furniture projects and a name that I feel fairly confident is a callback to Mari’s own Autoprogettazione. The idea of the site (and the book, to be fair) is that anyone can complete these projects and most of them in an afternoon. I am, predictably, obsessed.

The Sedia 1 is on the site, as is the classic Crate Chair by Dutch designer Gerrit Rietveld, plus a smattering of contemporary designers as well. The majority of the furniture and objects, which I cannot believe you can really just make as a regular person, but I am excited to try, were designed by the site’s founder and custodian Ian Aanderson. I am especially excited by his furniture pieces using cotton webbing.

To be fair, I’ve had this particular site in my pocket for years now. I check back, look at new additions and guides (and comments, what is wrong with me!), but remain always still a voyeur—always still intimidated to actually put hammer to nail. Until Chair Class™ and Enzo (and Todd!) and a pile of pine, that is.

One of the biggest revelations from Chair Class—one of the things that makes me, someone who knows nothing but admiration for carpentry—was the introduction of Japanese pull saws. Unlike the saws you are used to, where the cut action is on the push, the teeth of these saws face the opposite direction, and so, the cut action happens on the pull. Why does that make a difference? For one, you have more control; for two, that annoying wiggle and snag doesn’t happen; but most importantly for yours truly (and who knows, maybe you), it enables those of us without a *ton* of upper body strength to make these cuts without power saws (= intimidating).

Between the Japanese saws, Enzo, Todd, Chair Class, and Self Assembly, it seems like it takes a village for me personally to feel ready to Do It Yourself. But that’s just me! I hope that, now that all this is laid out in front you, you will try it. I love my Chair Class chair so much and I am excited and ready to make more and different ones. Plus, there really is no feeling quite like someone asking my partner if he made That Chair, and having him say, “No, she did.”

---

Listings

One man’s vintage flower press is another’s tortilladora in Santa Fe. (LINK)

A very exciting orange sink in Southport. (LINK)

It’s SUMMER! Which makes me want to jump off a dock! BYO in California (LINK); ‘Pullin’ some nice sized pike outta the lake, I hear’ in Michigan (LINK); all angles in Oregon (LINK); needs some TLC in Montana (LINK); with a sort of flipped vibe I’m not so mad about in New York (LINK).

---

1. Astoundingly, this post is not actually about Enzo Mari, who I COULD GO ON ABOUT. One last thing before we move on: Did you know that he designed the traffic barriers in Milan. He called them panetonne because that’s what they look like—my heart! 🥹