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Woodwork Magazine ~ May/June 1993
ROBERT ERICKSON ~ A Sierra Chairmaker Who Harvests His Own Material and Custom Fits Each Chair
by Glenn Gordon
Bob Erickson built his first chairs in the post-and-rung style of the old chairs that sit on the porches of sheriffs' offices and country general stores. Something in the chamfering and the lines of the backslats and headrails of those early chairs resembles the printers' typefaces and the exuberant lettering of the signs over the saloons, railroad depots, and wanted posters of the Old West.
Other influences have since appeared in Erickson's furniture--Danish modern, the work of Sam Maloof, and the Art Deco streamlining of the 1930s and 1940s--but his chairs still reflect the character of the region where he lives: near Nevada City, in the motherlode country of California, scene of the Gold Rush. The terrain here still bears traces of the fever that seized it a hundred and fifty years ago. The road up to Erickson's homestead, on a wooded ridge in the foothills of the Sierras, takes you through a stretch called Jackass Flats, a stripped-out moonscape of tailings left by the miners' ferocious hydraulic-sluicing methods.
The craftsman's materials
Many of Erickson's chairs originate literally from the land he lives on. As much as possible, he uses wood from timber logged and milled within a few miles of his house, which is also built from pine and cedar felled on his own land. Building with native materials is essential to more than just the imagery of his advertising. Erickson's whole sense of his identity as a craftsman is founded on the consciousness of the niche he occupies in the ecology of his immediate surroundings. Increasingly, his work is based on an understanding that craft is, at root if not in all its branchings, regional. Until recent times one of the central profundities of craft has been the idea that it arises out of the resources of its setting. The idea is as old as pots made from local clay, but in contemporary woodworking the idea tends to get lost with all the traffic in exotic lumber.
Aware of where things like wood and bread and butter come from, Erickson coaxes chairs out of the nearby trees with a lighter touch than the old sourdoughs used to blast the gold out of the local rock. Conscious of himself as the inhabitant of a particular place on Earth, Erickson sees that his fate is tied to the fortunes of that place. It's in his interest to be involved with the management and conservation of its resources-he has both an economic and esthetic stake in protecting the flow of a sustainable supply of old-growth timber.
The saddled seats of some of his chairs are 20in. wide, carved from single widths of 2in.-thick plank; such wide boards can only come from old trees. To ensure a supply, Erickson is involved with the Yuba Watershed Institute, which among its other activities in the ecosystem practices selective logging in an old-growth forest on 1300 acres of public land in Northern California. In concert with the Bureau of Land Management, and the Timber Framers' Guild of North America, the loggers, sawyers, and craftsmen who work with the Institute harvest a limited number of older trees and snags (dead, standing trees), while keeping the essential character and biodiversity of the old-growth forest intact. Erickson and his family-and every other soul in the self-reliant group of poets, carpenters, architects, and agrarians who homestead together up on the ridge -- live in a world where stripping the slopes is not economically shrewd but a way to shoot yourself in the foot.
Time in the making
On a sunny deck off the side of the Ericksons' house sits a large, cross-cut section taken from the trunk of a mature incense cedar felled by Erickson in 1982. Sticking up like tiny signposts from the rough, chain-sawn surface of the slab is an almost imperceptible row of tailors' pins, standing in a line running out from the pith. Lightly penciled in next to each pin is a date: 1727-the seed year; 1843-gold still asleep in the ground, Nevada City didn't even exist; 1853--population of Nevada City 5000 souls; 1933 ...1943 ...1953 ...19633 ... The pins march off, marking about an inch of growth per decade.
A tree is a chronicle written in concentric rings. You need to know how to read it, but the story is all there, filed away in the thin rings of the drought years and the thicker ones from years of abundant rain-and later on, in the sickly rings of acid rain. There are crimps and compression marks that speak of brittle frosts, high winds, and heavy snowloads. Scars from lightning strikes, stray bullets, nails, and fencewire. Signatures from the visitations of animals, birds, and bugs. Even traces of cataclysms that occurred far from where the tree stood. It has been documented that the cloud of ash from the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 obscured the light of the sun in some parts for more than a year, and affected the entire world's ecology, altering weather patterns, temperatures, and rates of plant growth. The rings of trees took note of it.
Design--every customer an expert
Robert Erickson designs a chair by listening to you. People have been trying out the chairs in his booths at the country's best craft shows for the past fifteen years, drawn to sit down in them not just because their feet hurt, nor only because the chairs look good, but because they sense that these chairs, a little like Erickson himself, seem to hear the little prayer people perpetually carry around within themselves, wishing for something with a nice fit.
"One of the things you find out with chair design," says Erickson, "is that everybody is a total absolute expert. People know what they like. They can put their finger on it ... they might not understand why, and I don't exactly understand sometimes what's going on either, but in making a chair for them, I do my best to duplicate the experience they had sitting in the chairs in my booth.”
"The ideal way to fit people is to have a variety of chairs on hand for them to sit in. I've found that if you listen to someone carefully, you can pretty much put together a chair just by the chairs he or she's been trying in the booth. As the customer sits in the sample chairs, you try to isolate different portions of the body, to determine the best height for the seat, the positioning and height of the headboard and the arms, and the depth of the seat, which also relates to and affects the length of the arm. The height of a chair's arms seems to be less a measurable and more an emotional or subjective thing-some people like to have their weight taken up by the arms; others like to have their shoulders hanging down.”
“There are also other dimensions and postures, though, which aren't quite so obvious: with rockers, for example, there's the tilt of the chair-where the center of balance is; its natural angle of repose. These things are very important, but they're less predictable and less understandable to me, so in these cases, again, I just try to listen to people to find what they feel most comfortable with. Some people like to sit tilted way back in a rocker, others like to sit more upright. To determine what degree of tilt is good, I'll have the person try two different chairs at my booth, one that tilts way back, and one more upright or normal. I also have some lengths of two-by-four and one-by-four on hand for shims. If I want to mock up a shorter seat, I put boards underneath people's feet as they sit, which raises their knees; if I want a taller seat, I put the boards under the rockers or the chair feet. If the person wants the chair to tilt back still more, I'll chock a block of wood underneath the fronts of the rockers to hold the person in a certain posture, forcing the chair to tilt further back than this particular chair's natural angle of repose.”
Erickson notes; incidentally, that “for people of different heights, the angle of repose on any given rocker is different: taking turns in the same chair, a shorter person will sit more upright in it than a person with long legs, whose legs will cause the chair to tilt back more. Similarly, the lower the seat, the farther back a person will tilt.”
In describing the increase or decrease of seat-to-back angle, Erickson uses the expression, ‘opening up or closing the mouth of a chair.’ To determine the profile or back-line in laying out a given chair, Erickson uses a ‘least curve/maximum curve’ template. The intensity of back curvature will depend on how much the mouth of the chair is open or closed—the more upright the chair, the milder the curve, and the more closed the mouth.
After working the lumbar curves of the back slats of more than a thousand chairs, Erickson has concluded that “most people are the same in the back from 10in. on down. The small of the back—the point of maximum curvature—is surprisingly only about 6in. from the seat. Realistically,” he adds, “there’s only so much you can do with wood—bending or laminating it—but some people, as soon as they hear the word ‘lumbar,” they get macho about it: ‘Give it to me,’ they say. They want the max … they want all they can get. But after a longer sitting, they find that the curve they first thought they wanted is too pronounced, too aggressive, and now find they really want it less emphasized. This is wood, after all, not foam, or a rolled-up towel on the back of a secretarial chair.”
Density and flex
Apart from the limitations on curvature, Erickson says that the density of a chair’s back is something he can play with. Some people like a denser back: one with less flex. By thickening or thinning the slats, density changes—1/32in. either way makes for a noticeably different feel. Flex also depends on the species of wood; even more specifically on the character of the particular board that is ripped into the strips used for the lamination of the slats. (The back-slats of Erickson’s chairs are not bandsawn or steam-bent, but bent-laminated.) Erickson’s development of the contoured, resilient ‘floating back’ is an advance over the conventional, band-sawn back slats of the chairs of Sam Maloof. Regardless of their degree of density, the slats in the floating back of an Erickson chair flex as you lean back against them. Each slat acts independently, individually absorbing subtle changes in the shape of your back as you shift your weight—something that the thicker back-slats of most chairs can't do. In assembly, the back slats are inserted into the chair frame in a way similar to the way sliding bypass panels are set into their tracks: the top ends go in first, up into double-deep mortises on the underside of the headrail, then the bottom ends are dropped into their mortises in the seat. Thus the slats are removable and replaceable, and tuneable for density.
A custom fit
As a potential customer tries out various adjustments, Erickson fills out a prescription-sized printed slip, noting their measurements, preferences in terms of comfort, and the species, color, and figure of woods. After visiting his booth, people sometimes deliberate a year or more before ordering a $1,600-$3,600 chair, so the slip goes into Erickson's files, to be resurrected when the customer places an order.
Low-keyed but highly focused, Erickson's approach to selling at these shows is artistic in itself. Listening carefully despite the activity swirling around the booth, Erickson pays close attention to what the customer tries to put into words. "It's a complex process. You're trying to make someone feel relaxed, get them to try to put a finger on what works for them and what doesn't, so they can have a good fitting, and therefore get the full benefit of a custom chair. You're also trying to make a sale, and persuade them that the benefit is worth it."
A refined process
His persuasion pays off. He and his assistants (the number varies with the volume of orders: as few as two people, as many as four) produce more than seventy-five chairs a year, nearly all fitted to an individual customer. Custom-made chairs involve a certain amount of handwork, but chainsaws, sanders, grinders, routers, and serious safety gear are also brought into play. Without resorting to heavy artillery, Erickson has found equipment to help him operate efficiently. For example, to carve and clean up the tight inside radii of the blended joints of his dining chairs and rockers, Erickson works the fillets with a baby strip-sander: a machine which resembles nothing quite so much as a fingertip wrapped with sandpaper.
Refining and analyzing every step of the process, from the logging and milling of the timber, to seasoning the plank in a solar kiln, to getting a chair into the market and promoting it, Erickson, with the support of his wife Liese Greensfelder, their son Tor, and their helpers among the neighboring homesteaders on the San Juan Ridge, have developed a cottage industry exemplifying the sort of economic sanity the late E. F. Schumacher spoke of in his book Small is Beautiful.
Changing influences
Even with a successful formula, however, there is continual pressure to come up with something new. Until recently, the strongest and the most readable influences on Robert Erickson’s work have been the chairs of Hans Wegner, Wharton Esherick, and, more obviously, Sam Maloof. But several years ago Erickson designed a pair of recliner chairs that drew from different sources. One of these, the Alexis Chair, was inspired by the fender of a 1938 pickup truck, and has the look of that era. The other, called the Martinez Chair, is the result of Erickson's crossbreeding of a Morris chair with an Adirondack chair. Erickson says: "I wanted it to look like an Adirondack lawn chair, work like a Morris chair, and feel like a La-Z-Boy™."
An interplay of straight tapers and curves animates the Martinez chair a different kind of visual energy Erickson's earlier works. The simplification of the components—the chair has no carved, blended joints—is a departure for him. It shows a willingness to take chances instead of settling comfortable into a style derivative of Maloof's—a style that he has mastered, and, in certain instances improved upon. In terms of the trademark image of his work that exists in the public mind, it's a risk to do something that looks so different, but then so is becoming a prisoner of your own past work. The Martinez chair might look more industrial and less conspicuously handcrafted than his earlier furniture, but if you take a close look at its details, you'll see no compromise of the workmanship that has won Erickson such wide respect.
In the long haul, whether a chair happens to have a manufactured or a handmade look doesn’t matter nearly as much as how compassionately it supports the human being who sits in it. Initially, people have always been drawn to Erickson’s chairs by the sensuousness of the carving, but they buy them, finally, because of the way his designs attend to the comfort of their bodies—not just the eyes, but the aching backs. The forms will vary, the woodworking is always beautiful, but the distinction of Erickson’s chairs is that they almost seem to listen to you—they materially express his interest in the comfort of other human beings.
Glenn Gordon is a writer and furniture designer in St. Paul, Minnesota.
How a design is developed: The Recliners
Though they look different, Erickson's two recliners have features in common: both are upholstered, both incorporate bent laminations, and both employ the same method for adjusting the angle of the back. What differentiates a Morris chair (named for William Morris, the patriarch of the English Arts and Crafts movement) from other club chairs, lounge chairs, or easy chairs is the adjustability of the back. Most versions of the Morris chair have three to five positions for the back. In some versions a metal or wooden rod runs behind the chairback to fit in notches on the inside faces of the side frames or legs. The notches can be worked in wood, or be iron-castings screwed to the frames. In others, a pair of pins or pegs protrude from the back-rod at rightangles to its axis, and the pins fit in holes bored in the arms or legs. Erickson has taken the latter approach, using bushings in the holes to take the wear and strain of the pins.
The Alexis chair is the fancier of the two designs, and features leather side panels upholstered in the tuck-and-roll style common on car seats up through the 1950s. The panels evoke the fender skirts or wheel guards that masked the whitewalls on the swankier cars of the era. Carrying the car allusion further, the arched side frames are not parallel but toe in slightly towards each other at the back, giving the chair a camber effect similar to the camber of car tires.
The structure of the Martinez chair is more open and straightforward. A pair of straight, tapered posts stake out the ground as the chairs front legs. The long curves of the combination arms and rear legs taper from front to back, serving as armrest and hand grip at the front, thinning as they arc down to strike the ground obliquely at the rear at the angle of a javelin. The other two frame elements in the side view of the chair--the seat rail and the upright of the back frame--are also straight-tapered. Within the back frame, however, the floating back-slats are curved, and their curves play off the curve of the arm.
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