The Adirondack Revisited
In 2009 I visited the Rockefeller Preserve in Teton National Park and saw and sat in what looked to me like a very distinctive Adirondack chair. These chairs arranged on the covered porch of the visitor’s center turned out to be the original Adirondack, the 1903 Westport Chair designed by Thomas Lee, a large landowner in Westport, New York. Later I talked with one of the architects of the Center and he told me that drawings of the chair were in the materials given the architects by the Rockefeller family during the design phase of the buildings. The architects immediately envisioned these chairs as perfect for the porch and hired their millwork company to build the chairs.
Re-inventing the chair from memory
I went home and that winter began to play with the design, tweaking and refining small details to my liking. I had no patterns so I had to re-invent the chair from memory, a manner in which I like to work.
I wanted my chair design to be linear, straight lines mostly, triangles being a theme. I wanted to retain the extreme angle of the seat platform, a relaxed angle of the back and the broad flat arms. I wanted to play with color and see what it would do to the form of a classic design.
Choosing the wood
I decided to use quartersawn European elm because it was durable and stable, qualities that make teak a preferred species for outdoor furniture. In building the chair I used compression joints throughout and marine grade hardware made from silicon bronze and brass. I didn’t like the cross brace in the original Westport because it got in the way of your feet when sitting and I eliminated this structural element and in its place my machinist and inventor neighbor, Don Mosman, designed a welded steel bracket that would be powder coated (baked paint) for outdoor use and attached with stainless steel fittings and brass knife- threaded inserts: a durable brace that could be tightened over time to keep the chair rigid and stable.
From my experience as a chair designer I wanted more lumbar support and so I bent the back planks into a back-friendly curve.
Playing with color
For color schemes I turned to a graphic artist, David Wellner, designer of this website and friend of mine, to play with color and to come up with some suggestions that he felt resonate with the chair design. Another friend, Joel Babb, from Maine, commented “What I find interesting is that the natural color of the wood is beginning to function as a color in a color scheme.” So the search for color patterns became a satisfying development in this design experiment. Patterns that interact with the inherent chair form and function.
After all of the color work, my son then suggested that the natural wood was the best choice of all and my most recent version shown here is in a natural tung oil finish. If left outdoors it will gray and lose its rich chestnut color but on a screened porch it would probably maintain it.
Creating a Modern Version
The modern version shown in green and black evolved out of the Westport design. It uses aluminum and a carved wood seat, variations I had not seen before.
Recommended Reading
If you’re interested in learning more about Adirondack chairs, a good book is The Adirondack Chair A Celebration of a Summer Classic by Daniel Mack published in 2008.
