All these years I’ve been watching huge flocks of blackbirds (common grackles, red-winged blackbirds, European starlings) swarming out of our marsh in early September dawns. And not til today did I finally decide to find out if they are migrating. I assumed, incorrectly, that they migrated at night. Nope. Diurnal migration for them. So the thousands of birds I see each morning are different ones from one day to the next…
Here’s a short video I put together of this morning’s flock(s). A bit shaky & noisy. The wind from the east brings the noise from the highway, just out of sight. Ditto the commuter train. I hope to catch the birds again tomorrow morning.
I know one thing I’ve never really written about is the preparation ahead of teaching a class. It will sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. I’m about to go to Pete Galbert’s to teach a 6-day class on the JA chair. My 4th time there, always a blast. It’s chair-overload for 6 full days. But the past couple of days I can’t get out of my own way. It’s just the nature of prepping for one of these gigs. The nice thing is the loft looks better than it has in months – but I know in a week-plus, it will fill right up again. Chairs, chair parts, bending forms, and other paraphernalia.
a gross of rungs
rear posts bent in the previous class
I taught there in the spring and above are the rungs and posts made by those students. Starting on Monday the incoming students will make sets for the next class – whenever that will be. This leap-frogging of parts is how I learned it with Drew Langsner and Jennie Alexander after they had taught it a few times…
Bending forms, empty for now, about to get filled up again with fresh posts. Some of these I made, some I inherited from JA.
I made a couple of JA chairs in the past week or so – and yesterday and today decided to weave some new old seats in hickory bark. Good thing I did two. I set out to weave a diamond pattern. Had a perfect chair and perfect bark. And mis-read my own notes and got a sort of reverse diamond pattern – see the chair on the left below. The one on the right is correct- but 2 things make it hard to see the pattern right now. The seat is still wet for one. And the bark is a mixture of shaved and split bark – so the texture and color vary more than the chair on the left.
2 new hickory bark seats
Both will look better over time. Nothing improves hickory bark seats like use. The more you slide your butt around in them the more polished they get and the better they look. I don’t put a finish on them.
Last week I visited an old friend who is a regular at his town’s swap-shop at the transfer station, aka the dump. After seeing some 18th/early 19th century chairs, he said “you should see the chests I get there…” and so he showed me a few. This one I took some quick photos of –
northern Hungarian chest, 19th century
What an astounding thing! Someone was getting rid of it – I wrote to John Cornall figuring he could ID this chest. And so he did. I don’t know John, but I follow his stuff on Instagram and just about always like what I see there https://www.instagram.com/johncornallantiques/?hl=en John told me that the culture this chest comes from is the Matyo Hungarian people, in the north of the country. What fun. How it got to southeastern Massachusetts who knows?
PETER FOLLANSBEE: JOINER’S NOTES 