Keeping a 300-year tradition alive: Quiet-loving chairmaker Curtis Buchanan long ago traded his power tools for a sledgehammer and a drawknife.
In 1983, a couple years after Curtis Buchanan grew enamored with the centuries-old woodworking technique of splitting logs to create kitchen implements and furniture, he ran across a picture of a Windsor chair. Its perfectly-shaped spindles were very different from the ladderbacks he’d grown up with in Kingsport, Tennessee.
“I had never been grabbed by anything like that before,” says the soft-spoken Buchanan, 66, who now lives in Jonesborough. “I was already warming up to the methods, and then when I saw that chair … that’s when I just dropped everything else that I was doing.”
Today, Buchanan is known as one of the South’s foremost Windsor chairmakers. His work, which was featured in a national PBS show in 2015, is displayed in the Tennessee State Museum, Southern Highlands Craft Guild, Tennessee Governor’s Mansion and Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. He has also taught in craft schools around the world.
Still, it wasn’t the art of chairmaking, but the notion that he could earn a living building things with his hands—and avoid working for someone else—that propelled him down his life’s path. While studying history in college and planning to be a professor, in the summer of 1971 he got a job as a carpenter and enjoyed it so much that he kept at it part-time when school reconvened, and for the next 10 years.
The usually easygoing Buchanan is irked by the stereotype of the typical manual laborer as “dumb.” “I mean, a good plumber has to think so spatially and has to see everything in his head before he even starts,” he says. “And a good auto mechanic is going to have to be able to troubleshoot stuff to save you money. He can’t go down 10 rabbit holes before he finds out what’s wrong.”
By the time the art of chairmaking appeared on his radar, Buchanan had already made a few tables and other pieces of furniture using standard methods. But, he says, he hated the power tools that “plugged in and made noise and could cut your finger off.” Building Windsor chairs, which requires none of that, was more to his liking.
“It’s a real different kind of woodworking,” he says. “I don’t start with boards and I don’t have a table saw. I don’t have machines and I don’t have sanders and stuff that most people would associate with a regular woodworking shop. I buy logs and I split them by hand with sledgehammers and wedges and then I start working it down with a drawknife or other hand tools.”
Teaching himself how to make the Windsors turned out to be tougher than expected. In the summer of 1983, Buchanan was visiting friends near Marion in western North Carolina, where he was living at the time, when he “serendipitously” ran into Dave Sawyer, an accomplished Windsor chairmaker from Vermont. Buchanan started writing letters to his new mentor before training with him for a week in New England the following year. He got rid of the rest of his power tools, except for an electric lathe, which he still uses.
CURTIS BUCHANAN’S 3 FAVORITE WOODS TO WORK WITH
• White oak, because of its strength and bendability.
• Hard (sugar) maple. “The tight grain enables it to hold crisp, clean lines and edges.”
• Walnut, which “is about as perfect as you can possibly get. It’s like Baby Bear’s bed. It’s not too hard and it’s not too soft. It’s stable, and it’s one of the most beautiful woods in the world. And it’s plentiful here in the southern Appalachian Mountains.”
In 1985, Buchanan and his wife Marilyn, a teacher, decided it was time to move from their countryside rental place at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She wanted neighbors nearby. He couldn’t stand the thought of living in a subdivision. Both wanted to lessen the environmental impact of driving everywhere. So they set out to find a small, family-friendly town where their then-2-year-old daughter Summer, who has Down syndrome, could walk about safely and truly be part of the community.
On a hometown visit to Kingsport, friends of Buchanan’s parents happened to mention Jonesborough.
“So we took a drive over here,” Buchanan says. “And before we got the whole length of Main Street, Marilyn said, ‘This is it.’” The couple moved with their two girls—little Maria was just a few weeks old—to the downtown historic district and Buchanan began making chairs fulltime. In his backyard, he maintains a garden and a 16-foot-by-20-foot timber-framed building where potential buyers can browse by appointment only. Buchanan also sells chairs out of his home.
Not an aggressive marketer by nature, in 1987 Buchanan received a letter from Monticello, asking him to submit information about his chairs.
“I immediately just jumped in the car,” he recalls. “I left about 5:00 that morning. We certainly didn’t have enough money for me to spend the night at a hotel. I figured showing up, with some chairs in my hand, was the best thing I could do.”
Buchanan sold two that day; the national landmark now houses 12 of his pieces.
The chairmaking process is much the same as it was 300 years ago, when the first Windsors were reportedly shipped from Windsor, England, to London. Buchanan starts with a white oak log acquired from a sawmill, splitting and shaping it with a drawknife while wet before drying it in a kiln that runs off a light bulb. Then he fashions the legs from sugar maple before carving the seat from an Eastern white pine board and boring holes with a brace and auger bit to assemble the parts. All chairs, both traditional and contemporary, are finished with milk paint. Prices range from $1,200 for a loop back side chair to $5,000 for a Mantis rocker.
Buchanan no longer travels to teach, instead hosting one-week workshops with three students each.
“Most of them are serious hobbyists,” he says. “My average student is probably a 65-year-old engineer or surgeon.” For younger students who can’t afford the classes, Buchanan has posted 120 free how-to videos on YouTube. He also sells DVDs and patterns for 10 different chairs.
In the early 1990s, he and two friends founded GreenWood, a sustainable forestry project in Latin America. “It was kind of out of frustration, out of not feeling like we were doing anything positive when it came to deforestation,” he says. “Here we were using this material for our livelihood but we were doing nothing to try to ensure that it’s going to be around for a long time.” For 10 years, Buchanan helped rainforest residents produce sustainable items, such as guitar parts, thereby providing jobs while protecting the habitat.
He is also co-founder of Jonesborough Locally Grown, which includes the popular farmers market, an annual farm-to-table dinner and the Boone Street Market store.
“We live right in the middle of town and want to try to make this the best place possible to live,” Buchanan says. “That’s not going to happen if you wait for somebody else to do it. It’s up to you.”
More info: curtisbuchananchairmaker.com.
The story above is from our November/December 2019 issue.
