Michael Houston Custom Furniture

 The symmetry of the eight-sided post lends itself to carving details like notches and this tapered fluting, which requires three different size small gouge chisels. When mountain people made chairs by hand, they first hewed the posts and rounds to square, then eight sided, then continued to sixteen sides and so on; the final rounding was done by scraping the wood with a broken piece of glass. They were trying to emulate the round posts of factory chairs. My first four chairs were done in this manner, except for a rustic work stool that I hewed roughly and left that way, so there would be no doubt that it was made with an axe.

   Around 1976 I had the opportunity to visit and work with Chester Cornett, a wild and eccentric Kentucky chair maker who wore a big beard and overalls, and developed his craft like no other. As a boy Chester cranked a flywheel lathe for his uncle, and learned to produce perfectly round chair parts. The first step was to hew all the stock to eight sides. When his uncle died Chester continued making chairs, but the lathe had a design flaw and the axle kept breaking. After having it welded many times Chester finally gave up on the lathe, and settled in on the style that became his trademark. He hewed his stock to eight sides and cleaned the facets with a drawknife on a shaving horse. Then Chester Cornett proceeded to carve some of the most exquisite chairs the mountains had ever seen, with multiple back slats (as many as thirteen), tall and pointed finials, and dozens of decorative notches and hand-carved pegs. Some of Chester's chairs have up to seventy pegs! After my time with Chester, both James and I adopted the eight-sided style. Later in Colorado I started carving these flutes on each facet, below the armrests and on the pointed finials. I encourage anyone to check out Chester Cornett on the web...he was a gentle soul who ate six fried apples and six fried eggs for breakfast; and he was so glad there were a few youngsters out there to carry the torch. Check out the Appleshop film, "Hand Carved", by Herb and Elizabeth Smith, if you really want to get a sense of who Chester was...