His seats are feats

The 21st century ends at the doorway of Don Weber's workshop.

Step over the threshold, and you're instantly transported back to, oh, about 1620.

Admittedly, the place has some modern touches: a radio, a phone, the inevitable personal computer. But Weber's basic tools (foot- powered lathe, shaving horse, spokeshaves, drawing knives and adzes) would be instantly recognizable to a subject of King James I.

"We do things the old-fashioned way," Weber explained.

Weber, 58, is a Welsh "chair bodger," or chair maker, transplanted into this sleepy little Kentucky farming community by way of New Mexico and California. He builds English-style, double-bow-backed Windsor chairs and other furniture, using 17th-century carpentry methods and hand tools of ancient design -- no routers, saws, sanders or power equipment of any kind.

The finished chairs, containing no nails or screws, are held together by wooden wedges and the tight-fitting joints Weber fashions with skills handed down over hundreds of years.

Those skills originally were brought across the Atlantic Ocean and into Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia by early Scotch-Irish immigrants. But the old ways fell out of use and were almost forgotten when mass-produced, store-bought furniture became widely available in the 20th century.

Now, in his own round-about way, Weber is helping revive the lost traditions. When he isn't making chairs, he teaches as an artist in residence at high schools across Eastern Kentucky, sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council, helping students reclaim knowledge that their grandparents and great-grandparents once possessed.

"We try to reawaken them to something that was part of their ancestors' everyday life, using traditions that I grew up with in England," Weber said.

John Benjamin, who directs arts and education programs for the Kentucky Arts Council, said Weber always draws a strong response from students.

"We've gotten some wonderful letters from kids, and his residencies have been highly successful," Benjamin said. "Don's just a tremendously interesting character to sit and talk with, and he's widely known among woodworkers for carrying on these ages-and-ages- old Welsh techniques."

Weber stands as slender as the spindles on one of his chairs, with large, powerful hands, a perpetual, toothy grin and a hint of an accent. In his sweater and tweedy cap, he manages to look both very British and completely at home in Eastern Kentucky.

He grew up in central Wales in the village of Llandrindod Wells, where his father was a coal miner and craftsman. Weber liked working with his hands, so he apprenticed himself in an English cabinet shop. Later, he fell into the back-to-simplicity movement of the 1960s and roamed around Europe supporting himself by repairing furniture. In 1975, he came to the United States.

"Had a friend in a commune in New Mexico, so I went out there to see him," Weber explained.

Next, he moved to Mendocino, in Northern California, and began making furniture, using the centuries-old methods he had mastered in England. He also learned blacksmithing so he could make his own tools.

By the 1980s, Weber's reputation as a craftsman was growing, and in 1989, he was invited to demonstrate his skills at the Berea Crafts Fair in Kentucky. He soon was visiting the state regularly to teach classes for the arts commission.

Three years ago, Weber decided to leave California. So, he piled his tools, belongings and his dog, Misty, into his 1953 Chevy pickup and drove to Kentucky. It has become home, he said.

Nowadays, Weber repairs furniture for his Paint Lick neighbors and makes chairs for collectors all over the country. Windsor chairs, developed in England in the 1700s, originally were intended to be cheap so that innkeepers and restaurant owners could afford them. Ironically, Weber's creations, which take up to 60 hours to make, fetch $650 and up.

Weber also has a few "side projects" in the works. He is building a church altar, using wood from an old pin oak that once stood on the church grounds. He's designing a water wheel for a village in the African nation of Cameroon that will be used to produce electricity for a school there.

And during the summer he teaches basic woodworking and blacksmithing. It's another way to pass on some of what he's learned, he said.

"There's a power tool for everything today," Weber said. "A man doesn't have to know how to use a chisel and saw anymore. The craftsmanship has gone out of the craft. I'd like to bring that back."

Copyright 2002 Cowles Publishing Company
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