Shop Log

Chairs from Scrap, Firewood, and Rejects

By Gary Weeks
Posted Mar 20, 2026
Categories: Dining Chairs, Wood, Craftsmanship

We are supporters of Project Art, a Wimberley organization that promotes art and craft through student mentorships, workshops, gallery showings, and such. In our shop, Autumn mentored a student who designed and built a desk.

Project Art has a gallery. They scheduled a show for objects based on chairs: drawings, photos, paintings, collages, crazy notions, and things to sit on. About three to four months before the show, we were asked if we’d contribute.

I didn't really want to do all that work. But I said yes.

To begin, I dumped out a scrap barrel. In those barrel, we put the bandsaw offcuts, pieces with defects, and other midsize pieces that won't make parts--scrap until Michael and Gaylyn come get the collection and fire pots with it. The resulting glaze is distinctive.

The end, a chair: a sturdy, and pleasingly comfortable prototype, came a month later. It wasn't a full month's effort, but there is a lot of time in it. Searching for terms to describe its style, AI lead me to call it Structural Expressionism--a clumsy and presumptuous collection of syllables, but not without some bearings. We may attempt to perfect a version and put it in production (try to sell it).