From: bds@mbunix.mitre.org (Smith)
Subject: Re: chair/table
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 12:57:57 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.170741.5475@informix.com> davek@informix.com (David Kosenko) writes:
>sine@sun.acs.udel.edu writes:
>>>I am looking for plans for a Colonial style chair/table (don't know if
>>>it has another name).  This is a piece in which the back of the chair
>>>flips down to form the table top.  
>
>Chris Lewis writes:
>>I think they're simply called "chair-tables".  I believe that they
>>originated with the Shakers who made things simple, but with multiple
>>functions.  Several of Thomas Moser's books have plans for them.
>
>Well talk about your good timings.  If you are a viewer of The New Yankee
>Workshop, featuring everyone's favorite power-tool-packrat, Norm Abram,
>there is an upcoming episode whose project is listed in my PBS program 
>guide as "Chair Table."  As Norm is rather fond of things Shaker, I can
>well imagine that this would be the very sort of thing he would build.
>
>Dave
>-- 

This show was from a few years ago.  As with most of his projects, the
results are reasonably well built and serviceable.  As with most
things called "Shaker" the chair-table was developed in rural America
as a means to save space, although personally the thought of using one
as a chair does not give me much comfort.  You can order the plans for
$7.50, I think.

As for Norm's love of things Shaker, I would say that he mostly likes
to build simple, unaddorned styles roughly inspired by the Shaker
furniture typically found in the Northeast Shaker communities in the
mid-1800s (except that he usually stains his pieces while the specific
Shaker pieces that inspired him were typically painted red), although
he has also built a number of Craftsman style pieces, and has built at
least a few pieces from Colonial Williamsburg and Sturbridge Village,
which are neither Shaker nor Craftsman (eg, the corner cupboard, the
breakfront, and the fences).  He has also built a "Chippendale"
mirror, and some pieces that only look like post-industrial revolution
factory-built whatever-will-sell style.  Now that I think about it, he
also built an English garden bench.

For those of you in striking distance, I would recommend taking trips
to the remaining Shaker communities and looking at the furniture.
You'd be amazed at the diversity of styles, eg, there are pieces
clearly inspired by Empire style at Enfield, and pieces that can only
be called Victorian at Canterbury.  There are chests with ornate
skirts around them and mirrors on top.  There are bentwood rockers,
and I've seen pictures of ornately carved boxes.  The Shakers were a
religious order which built it's own furniture, but since they were
celibate, the people in the order were constantly new, coming from the
outside world where many had learned to build furniture, bringing the
styles of the times with them.  They built furniture primarily because
they needed it.  A good percentage was well built, but some was junk.
Furniture was no more important to them than doing the laundry or
tilling the fields--this doesn't mean it was unimportant, just that
the laundry and tilling the fields was also important.

Barry