The 2011 get-together of the Association of Pole Lathe Turners and Green Woodworkers (APT). Their website is at www.bodgers.org.uk.
Tag Archives: Chair making
Making Cypriot traditional rush seated chairs
1993 video of Cypriot traditional rush seated chairs.
Making a Windsor Chair
Stuart King explores the making of a windsor chair by attending the development week at The Skills Centre at Axminster Tools in Devon. It is intended that the five day course will be a regular feature of the many woodworking and engineering courses they run throughout the year.
Making a Windsor Chair on The Generation Game in 1974
Stuart King demonstrates the making of a Windsor chair at a time when this Bruce Forsyth show reached an audience of 18 million. I have since had my hair cut!
Samuel Rockall: last of the chair bodgers
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The proud brick quoined flint cottage still stands alone on Summer Heath, once home to the Rockall family for an uninterrupted 180 years. But no longer can freshly cut Beech butts be seen stacked in the shade of a tall hedge or the whinny of Dapple, the family cart horse be heard from the meadow.
A traditional Chiltern Hills way of life ceased when Sam Rockall died aged 84 in 1962. The local newspapers announced: Samuel Rockall, the last of the Bodgers is dead. Continue reading
Chair Turnings
Woodturning has played more than a supporting role in the history of chair making. From the ancient Egyptians, who used the lathe for turning chair parts, to the latest computer-controlled copy lathes man has endeavored to decorate his furniture and solve the practical turning problems that arise.
Some of the earliest evidence of turned work in English chairs date from the twelfth Century where a chair of state is depicted in an illuminated manuscript written by Eadwine, a monk from Canterbury.
The Chair Bodgers of Buckinghamshire
The old chair bodgers of Buckinghamshire are now relegated to history, the last few of them doggedly clinging on to their traditional way of life until the late 1950s. I have been privileged to know some of these craftsmen from the Beech-clad Chiltern Hills and have spent many a cosy hour by their firesides and in their disused workshops sharing their old tales and dry sense of humour. They are all gone now but their legacy is every where. You are supported by their craftsmanship every time you sit in an old Windsor chair. Every leg, spindle and stretcher contains the spirit of these men, the essence of the Beechwoods is still there and if those turnings could talk they would speak of spring Bluebells, red Squirrels and autumn winds. Continue reading