A Barn Adornment
Recently I was contacted by Mike Podmaniczky, who I’ve know for more than three decades and who served un-knowingly as the prototype student when we designed the Furniture Conservation Training Program at the SI (Mike was in the first class of that graduated in 1990, I think) and went on to be a Furniture Conservator at Winterthur for many years. Mike and I shared many interests, not the least of which was the chairmaking of Samuel Gragg.
Fifteen years ago he curated a pretty darned wonderful exhibit on Gragg chairs and their making, and now as he is cleaning out the closets he asked me if I wanted one of the signs from the exhibit. My answer was of course, “Yes!”
It arrived recently and will be ensconced in the attic video studio alongside my Narayan Nayar portrait of the Studley Ensemble.
I’ve always loved Gragg’s chairs and was excited to see a couple in person this past summer at the Yale Furniture Study. Looking forward to your video series. If you ever have a building I’ll drop everything to participate.
As I work my way through building these chairs I will have a better idea about offering a workshop, which I would love to have. At this point I am think I have figured out how to get it down to nine days, but I won’t offer a workshop until I can get it down to seven.