Shop Log
Chairs from Scrap, Firewood, and Rejects
By Gary Weeks
Posted Mar 20, 2026
Categories:
Dining Chairs, Wood, Craftsmanship, Community
We Designed Chairs for Project Art
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 want to but I said yes.
To begin, I dumped out a scrap barrel. In those barrels, 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. Then it's fuel. 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 (i.e., try to sell it).
Austin didn't want to do it either. Said no. Felt bad. Designed and built a chair in a weekend: original, sculptural, comfortable. He used reject parts and larger scrap from the firewood stack. We don't know what style it is.
The chair sold the first weekend.
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