The Ghost of Samuel Gragg Comes A’Callin’

 

 

2023 is shaping up as a pretty Graggtastic year in the shop.  I am in the home stretch of the copious pinstriping for one chair to be delivered.  A second client’s chair is fabricated but I have not yet begun the painting, and a third chair is about half built.

 

Then last week I was contacted by someone who has a Gragg chair with a broken arm, and based on the images they sent it just *might* be ONLY THE THIRD ORIGINAL, COMPLETE  ELASTIC ARM CHAIR known to exist!

There is the completely overpainted chair at the SI that I kept in my conservation lab for almost two decades, trying unsuccessfully to persuade the curator to allow me to remove the overpaint.

Then there is the beauty at the Carnegie in Pittsburgh, and the heavily restored one in Baltimore.  Unfortunately at the moment I cannot find my overall photos of the BMA chair but I have a large folder of detail shots.  As I understand it the Baltimore chair was missing some elements that were newly fabricated and integrated to make a whole chair.

This newest chair has a tricky repair to be made to the arm, and the putative client inquired about me making a new chair to make a pair with the old one.

On top of all of this excitement there are several new Gragg-ish projects on the drawing board.  Without revealing all the cards, consider that 1) we have a new grandson, and 2) the front porch of our Shangri-la cabin is rocking-chair-tastic.

Finally, I’m at long last seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for the “Build A Gragg Chair” video set.  Whether that light is sunshine or an oncoming train I cannot yet be certain, but I remain hopeful.  At the moment I am estimating the series to be more than a dozen half-hour-ish episodes, and Webmeister Tim and I are noodling the mechanism for the on-line offering.  I’ve had one faithful donor sending me a small contribution every month (THANK YOU JimF!), but we need to come up with a system for processing the $1.99(?)/episode charge without viewers crawling up my back as the episodes are released.  One approach I will almost certainly NOT take is a subscription model.  I’ve spoken to some subscription-based content creators and they are unanimous in their regret.  No matter how much content they create, their subscribers want more, and more often.   I want no part of that.

Now the only thing left in the equation is the resolution to the question, “Why am I not as energetic and productive in my 68th year as I was in my 28th?”

‘Tis a mystery.  Who knows, if I can solve that problem, I may even want to offer another Gragg chair workshop if there is interest.