If you are a fan of quirky rustic furniture then you could spend some time looking around the Touraine Loire Valley. Like in any provincial rural area people have found ways to be both thrifty and creative. Here are a couple of examples I've come across in my travels. Both, I suspect, are 19th century.
Above is a chair displayed at the Chateau de Bridoré. There is no information about the chair and I didn't get the chance to ask anyone. It is clearly hand made, with legs formed using a spokeshave or a drawknife. I don't know what the wood is but I would guess maybe poplar, willow or ash. The bent wood has been arranged in an unexpected way, by someone who was solving a structural problem on the spot. Not a professional chair maker, but someone willing to have a go. The seat and back looks like it could be woven reedmace.
The pair of chairs below are in the hunting museum at the Chateau de Chambord. Unsurprisingly I suppose, since they are made out of antlers and deer hide. I suspect they are masquerading as 'rustic', the sort of thing a bourgeois hunter might have furnished his hunting lodge with and paid a ridiculous amount of money for.
1 comment:
Susan, that wonderful first chair looks like a bodger's rough shaping work before turning on a bodger's lathe.... the wood, though, is not ash as the budding points are not in opposing pairs.... and there is an alternative to Reedmace for the weave, as there don't seem to be any leaf nodes visible, and that is birch... I have seen slivers drawn with spokeshave or drawknife... there were still itinerant "bodgers" around when I was growing up and not all used lathework items [not long after the war and some people could only earn a living that way... ties in with your "Not a professional chair maker, but someone willing to have a go" or needing to?]
Also, the crosspieces do not look to have been turned... so like the frame of the chair, wood of the right diameter was chosen... so something quick growing giving long, even diameter lengths..... to me, a truly fascinating item.
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