In the Milwaukee Art Museum’s ChairPark—a “please-be-seated”collection ofcontemporary chairs made in a variety

of historical styles—stands a rather impos-ing plank-seated, board-constructed chairmade of elm. When I first visited this exhi-bition, I simply looked at the elm chair andjumped to the conclusion that this must bea stiff and extremely uncomfortable chair:the vast expanse of wood and the geometryof the planes seemed unwieldy and unfor-giving. However, upon sitting down in it Ifound, much to my surprise, that it wasextremely comfortable. The angle of theback provided perfect support, and the soft,oiled finish imparted not just a smooth bur-nished surface but an upholstered effect.Even without a seat cushion the elm chairwas as comfortable a chair as any I had satin. The accompanying interpretive materialidentifies it as a “lambing chair,”a collector’sterm for the seating form that Bill Cotton,in his encyclopedic The English RegionalChair, attributes to the sheep-raising districtsof Lancashire and Yorkshire, England, anddates from the mid-eighteenth through thenineteenth centuries. According to oral his-tory, the low seat and wooden back andwings provided shelter from cold, dampdrafts when pulled up to the fire in a shep-herd’s croft in northern England.

Amidst a Boston leather chair, a Philadel-phia Chippendale chair, and even a RietveldBerlin chair, the lambing chair is a less famil-iar form, one that might be simply dismissedas a folk survival. But the story of KennethFisher, the chair’s maker, and the develop-ment of his interpretation of the lambingchair tell a different story, one that speaksmore to the maturation of the studio furni-

W O O D W O R K 53 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5

Refined VernacularThe Work of Kenneth Fisher

BY EDWARD S. COOKE JR.

This traditional lambing chair, built in England

between 1800-1850, had a profound influence on

the course of Kenneth Fisher’s work. PH

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ture field in the last quarter of the twentiethcentury than to the persistence or preserva-tion of traditional vernacular forms. Theterm “studio furniture” refers to one-off,high-end, custom work made in small shops,not by craftsmen who have learned theirtrade through apprenticeship or in industry,but rather by self-taught “alternativelifestylers” or makers trained in college pro-grams in woodworking and furniture design.

Kenneth Fisher (b. 1950) did not descendfrom a family of woodworkers and internal-ize familial or local cabinetmaking traditions,but grew up on a farm in southwestern Indi-ana and entered the field of furnituremakingthrough academic instruction, a product ofthe expansion of craft and art curricula inAmerican universities that had taken placein the 1960s. Upon his discharge from theMarine Corps in 1972, Fisher had matricu-lated at the University of Southern Indianain Evansville under the GI Bill. Although hemajored in Life Sciences, he also began totake sculpture classes as a sophomore. As hereturned to school for his junior year, hefound the art department had the use of alarge new wood/metal shop and immediatelyenrolled in John McNaughton’s class. It was

a propitious moment, since the woodshophad just moved from a small space, approx-imately the size of a two-car garage, to a$500,000 facility with brand new equipment.It was an awe-inspiring space in which a stu-dent with dreams could really flourish.

The history of academic furniture hastended to focus on the East and West Coastsand has rarely paid much attention to theMidwestern programs. Like most otherdepartments in the region, Southern Indi-ana focused upon sculptural furniture. JohnMcNaughton, who first worked as an auto-mobile designer and then earned an MFAin sculpture from Bowling Green, viewed

himself as a woodworker/sculptor. In thisapproach he was linked with a generationof teachers and makers who sought to makesculptural furniture in the 1960s. Eschew-ing the reverence for wood, traditional join-ery, and familiar functional forms that typ-ified the work of designer-craftsmen andwoodworkers of the 1950s and early 1960s,McNaughton, like Wendell Castle andTommy Simpson, demonstrated a predilec-tion for art furniture. He viewed furnitureas a form of additive sculpture, gluing uppieces of wood and shaping the mass withhand tools and grinders to produce distinc-tive witty, ironical, or fantastic forms. Heexplained his philosophy at that time: “Mywork has to go beyond a nice recognizableform. It has to be an art object which makesa statement, a message with impact. Humorand whimsy play important roles.…Mywork has to go beyond being well-craftedand a nice table.” In the latter part of the1970s, McNaughton produced a body ofwhimsical illusionistic works that playfullyengaged the viewer.

Fisher found the woodshop to be a com-fortable and stimulating environment. Hismechanical aptitude, which had served himwell as a weapons repair specialist in theMarine Corps, gave him the confidence totackle large, complex technical work, andhis nascent sculptural interest emboldenedhim to respond to McNaughton’s charge tomake a wooden object that would incorpo-rate mechanical principles. Like others inthe mid-1970s, Fisher decided that theclock would offer the perfect balance oftechnical demand (for the works) and artis-tic demand (for the case).

It was at this same time that Constan-tine’s, a New York fine wood merchant,offered plans for clocks with wooden works;that John Gaughan made a skeletal grandfa-ther’s clock with wooden works; and thatLarry Hunter, who taught at San Diego State,used the clock form to explore kinetic sculp-ture within a functional format. Huntereschewed the older traditional adornment ofthe case and focused upon visible works sothat people could watch time actually move.Like Hunter, Fisher sought to create a visualform that displayed every aspect of the mech-anism of time, and plunged into the con-struction of a gigantic, three-geared clockthat took him more than 3,000 hours overtwo years to make. The finished clock, stand-ing 12 feet high and 8 feet wide, weighed

W O O D W O R K 54 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5

CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT—

Kenneth Fisher, “Time Stops for the Artist,”

(1975-77), Evansville, Indiana. Black walnut, black

cherry, birch, sugar pine, hard maple, red oak,

white oak; 144" x 96" x 48".

Lawrence Hunter, “Clock IV,” (1975), San Diego,

California. Black walnut; H: 86", D: 26".

John McNaughton, “The Spring Table,” (1976),

Evansville, Indiana. Plywood, glass; 18" x 56" x 30".

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about 350 pounds. He used mainly blackcherry, hard maple, and birch for the works,and made the frame of brick-laminated blackwalnut. The size of the clock and its gearingattracted considerable attention, resulting ina photograph of it and a description of itsworks in issue 15 of Fine Woodworking, thejournal that became the first and most influ-ential publication for the field of studio fur-niture. The image of Fisher with his clockcaptures the historical moment: a shaggyhaired, mustachioed maker in bellbottomjeans stands proudly in front of an unprece-dented piece of sculptural furniture. Theclock neatly blended the two main furniture-making philosophies of the time, the non-traditional freewheeling sculptural stance of1960s furnituremaking and the highlyrefined technofetishism of the super objectsthat began to appear in the later 1970s.

While Fisher had aspirations for devel-oping a career in “monumental wood sculp-ture,” the market for such work was limitedin 1978—there were a mere handful of craftor art galleries that showed furniture, fewexhibitions that showcased the work, a sin-gle publication that illustrated a sufficientquantity of work, and general lack of pub-lic awareness regarding the field. All woulddevelop over the course of the 1980s, butFisher, like many contemporaries, found itdifficult to secure any commissions to getstarted in the late 1970s. He was forced totake a job for a year building houses downin Gilbertsville, Kentucky, in the KentuckyLake region. In this capacity he gained prac-tical woodworking experience, but the lackof a shop prevented him from undertakingany of his own furniture. After a year in the

construction business, he took a job in aGeneral Electric chemical laboratory andfelt resigned to a less creative career.

However, a photograph of Fisher and hisclock, posted in an antique shop in New Har-mony, Indiana, caught the attention of JaneBlaffer Owen, a prominent art and antiquecollector and philanthropist, who then askedto meet the maker. Impressed with Fisher andhis work, she encouraged him to return tofurnituremaking and consulted McNaughtonabout additional training. He recommendedthat Fisher apply to either Rochester Instituteof Technology’s School for American Crafts-men (RIT) or the Rhode Island School ofDesign (RISD) in order to develop better cab-

inetmaking skills. The latter accepted Fisheron the basis of the clock, and he enrolled asan undergraduate, funded by Owen, for the1979-80 academic year. He then entered thetwo-year MFA program.

The two years during which Fisher wasa graduate student proved to be a momentof transition in the RISD furniture pro-gram. Tage Frid, the head of the graduateprogram, had just finished the manuscriptfor his volume on furnituremaking tech-niques for Taunton Press and received anew contract that allowed him to focus onthe graduate program. To teach the under-graduates, RISD hired Seth Stem, a recentgraduate of Virginia Commonwealth Uni-

W O O D W O R K 55 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5

CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT—

Kenneth Fisher, model for “Budding Platform

with Chairs.” The actual piece, built while at RISD

in 1982, measured 120" x 84" x 84".

Kenneth Fisher, “Wine rack” (1981), Providence,

Rhode Island.

Kenneth Fisher, “Structural Cabinet” (1980),

Providence. 64" x 45" x 19".

Carol Rosen, “Altered Spaces IX” (1987-88),

Califon, New Jersey. MDF; 191⁄2" x 24" x 24".

Kenneth Fisher, “Swamp Cabinet” (1981), Provi-

dence, Rhode Island. Walnut, maple, ash, sassafras,

osage orange, ebonized oak, cherry; 72" x 52" x 16". PH

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versity. Both instructors were to have a sig-nificant impact on Fisher.

Frid emphasized the need to designaround construction and imparted a cer-tain shop floor resourcefulness that wouldmaximize the appropriate technique in anefficient, practical manner. From StemFisher developed a keen interest in bentlamination as a foundation of design. Atable and chairs project he undertook whileat RISD reveals the influence of both teach-ers—the chairs recall Frid’s three-leggedstools, while the tapered lamination of thetable’s legs acknowledge Stem’s influence.Another invaluable experience duringFisher’s RISD graduate work was a job dur-ing the summer of 1981 working for ThorpBrothers, a high-end furniture restorationshop in New York City. Exposure to histor-ical furniture and cabinetmaking tech-niques expanded Fisher’s horizons, and theacquisition of restoration skills diversifiedhis career possibilities. Since there is alwaysa need for repair and refinishing, he could

always take on restoration work when heneeded cash.

Fisher graduated from RISD in 1982 withthe expectation of entering the mainstreamof the studio furniture field. He took a teach-ing and residency position at Peters ValleyCraftsmen in Layton, New Jersey, andreceived a significant Visual Arts Fellowship,awarded by the New Jersey Arts CouncilGrant, for 1983-84. As an award winner, hewas included in two local exhibitions: a Feb-ruary exhibition at the Nabisco BrandsGallery in East Hanover, New Jersey and asummer exhibition at the Noyes Gallery ofArt in Oceanville, New Jersey. For both localshows, he relied on work he had completedwhile a graduate student rather than morerecent work. At the Nabisco Gallery he

showed “Swamp Cabinet,”“Structural Cab-inet,” and a wine rack. For the Noyes heshowed only his “Swamp Cabinet,”which EdSozanski, the art critic for The PhiladelphiaInquirer, referred to as “a salon piece, overde-signed and overjoined.”However, such a dis-play of technical virtuosity was typical ofmuch of the work made in the late 1970s andearly 1980s. The contrast with his earlierclock reflects the changes within the field atlarge. Whereas the earlier work had com-bined a free-form frame with an intricateclock works, Fisher’s RISD body of furniturewas sophisticated work in which the techni-cal details and combination of contrastingwoods became the dominant message. It wasserious refined furniture more than loosesculptural furniture, and his “Swamp Cabi-net” became his calling card during thisperiod when the field privileged fussy work.

While Fisher’s work fit squarely into thedominant strain of studio furniture at thistime, he apparently found it difficult to builda career as a studio furnituremaker. The

W O O D W O R K 56 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5

Side and rear view of a traditional lambing chair,

English, 1800-1850, from the Owen family’s collec-

tion . Plank-constructed from pine and elm, it was

this design which inspired Fisher’s subsequent work.

Peters Valley studio was dysfunctional (theshop space was dilapidated, with no heat, andfunds were lacking), and he found it difficultto make a body of work or sell anything.Looking back on this period, he recentlycommented “I was never unsure of my ownwork, but I was unsure about making moneydoing it. I had many ideas in my mind andas sketches in a folder. I was astounded thatthe work I had produced at this point was notselling. I didn’t have a permanent house tokeep them in, and they only became a bur-den to drag along with me or to find storagefor.” His furniture was more for show thanfor sale. Cash flow, or a lack thereof, thusbegan to influence his decisions.

He began to orient his work towards avariety of related activities in the New YorkCity area, establishing a shop in Brooklynin 1984: he did restoration work for MarkHampton (another Indiana native), under-took some restoration work of his own,constructed built-in furniture according toarchitects’ specifications, and even oversawwork on the apartments of the Owen fam-ily. From 1986 to 1988 he worked as a fab-ricator for the sculptor Carol Rosen, whohad first met Fisher when they both exhib-ited at the Nabisco Brands Gallery. WhenRosen began to explore clean, precise geo-metric forms, she realized she needed acraftsman with strong technical skills. FromRosen’s cardboard and tape maquettes,Fisher constructed hollow forms of MDF,which he had cut and glued with a complexseries of jigs to ensure strong, crisp edgesthat would not fray or soften. Rosen thentook the primed forms and finished themwith her own paint scheme to emphasizethe different planes. Work for Rosen seemsto have encouraged Fisher to appreciatesimple forms and shapes without sacrific-ing his commitment to technical precision;his subsequent work was to be considerablyless self-conscious.

While engaged in this variety of activities,Fisher encountered a charming piece of ver-nacular furniture owned by the Owen fam-ily—a “lambing chair,” the collector’s termfor a boxed wing chair. The Owen’s examplebelonged to a venerable tradition of enclosedwooden seating designed to offer protectionfrom the drafts so common in houses fromthe seventeenth century to the mid-nine-teenth century. Settles and wainscot chairsoften faced the fireplace, with the rear boardthat extended to the floor and the wooden

side wings or paneled enclosures underneaththe arms sheltering the sitter from the coldair drawn up the chimney. Randle Holme,the late seventeenth-century English authorwho provided invaluable commentary on thecrafts, described just such an old-style armedbox chair:“Some term it a settle chaire, beingso weighty that it cannot be moued fromplace to place, but still abidest in it owne sta-tion, hauing a kind of box or cubberet in theseate of it.”

Whereas the wider settle served as aroom divider and effective barrier to drafts,the chair provided more individualizedcomfort. Like its fashionable urban cousin,the upholstered easy chair, the boxed wingchair provided a sheltered enclosure for the

aged, the infirm, or for childbearingwomen. Instead of expensive importedupholstery materials that a specializedcraftsman, the upholsterer, laboriouslynailed, stitched, and shaped, the vernacu-lar version relied simply on the local arti-san and solid wood to provide comfort. Theraked angle of the back, the height of theseat, and the level and shape of the armrestsprovided the necessary bodily comfort.Drawers, opening to the front or the side,could be used to store chamber pots, books,or other personal possessions.

Most English examples of the boxedwing chair were the work of a joiner, whoused paneled construction with mortise-and-tenoned frames to build the chair.

W O O D W O R K 57 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5

CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT—

“Child’s rocker” (1750-1800), American. Poplar,

white pine, and soft maple; 211⁄16" x 911⁄16" x 93⁄4".

Yale University Art Gallery, the Mabel Brady Gar-

van Collection, 1930.2293.

“Chair” (1905-30), designed by Thomas Lee, made

by Henry Bunnell, Westport, New York. Hemlock;

383⁄8" x 391⁄2" x 40". Yale University Art Gallery, Mr.

and Mrs. Frank J. Coyle, LLB, Fund, 2002.77.1.

“Winged armchair” (1750-1850), North Lan-

cashire, England. Pine.

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However, the Owen’s chair is a carpenter’sversion, in which none of the frame isjoined. Rather, the boards are sawn to cer-tain patterns (the back and sides are eachcomprised of several boards glued up) andthen butted and nailed together. A cleat isnailed along the upper part of the outback,nails along the back edge of the sides securethe back, the rear feet are nailed to the back,

and the seat is nailed into place through theside and rear boards, providing a stiffeningcore. The dovetailed drawers and the tenon-ing of the two front rails into the front legsprovide the only evidence of joinery. Nailedboard construction of boxed wing chairshas been found in American furniture, pri-marily on children’s chairs, which wereoften fitted as close-stools with a round holecut in the seat. The emphasis on sawingboards of straight-grained lightweightspecies such as pine or yellow poplar, assem-bling the parts with metal fasteners, andrelying on the precise angles of the boardsto ensure tight fit and comfort also link the

Owen’s example with the so-called “West-port” chairs made of hemlock during theearly twentieth century in that New Yorktown located on Lake Champlain. However,the Westport chair was intended primarilyas an informal outdoors chair, usually sitedon the porch, rather than an interiordomestic seating form.

Fisher was immediately intrigued by theOwen’s chair when repairing it in 1983. Itscommanding presence appealed to his inter-est in monumental sculptural furniture, itsdirect workmanship resonated with theprinciples that Tage Frid emphasized, and itshistorical associations tapped his develop-ing appreciation of antique furniture. Hisrestoration work had reoriented his perspec-tive and made him more sympathetic to pastwork rather than only creating unique sig-nature work. He therefore decided to makehis own version of the lambing chair basedvery closely on the original. He measured theprototype, set out to copy it, and ended upmaking a run of 45 chairs in 1986 for theNew Harmony Inn in New Harmony, Indi-ana, a commission that was initiated by amember of the Owen family.

For this project he used wide boards ofyellow poplar (he provided an oil finish forsome of the chairs, while others were paintedby a local artist), screwed a cleat along theback to keep the glued-up back boardstogether, drove screws along the rear edge ofthe sides into the back board, used screws tosecure the rear feet to the back boards, ranscrews through the upper front rail of thefront to secure the front edge of the seatwithin the structure, used doweled joints toassemble the front façade, nailed the drawertogether, and screwed on the small armrestsand handholds . He did countersink and plugmost of the screws. In making this first set ofchairs, he found the form much more com-plicated than he had originally imagined: theuse of a plank seat required allowance for thewood to expand and contract within theboard frame, the weight of the boards couldmake the final chair too heavy, and any slightvariation in the compound angles wouldresult in disaster.

After his initial foray into the vernacularform, Fisher began around 1994 to make hisown refinements. Instead of using commonyellow poplar, he decided to make his chairsout of more figured woods such as black wal-nut, cherry, sassafras, and elm, and appliedan oil finish that accentuated the grain and

W O O D W O R K 58 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5

One of Fisher’s early lambing chairs, together with

a detail of the drawer construction.

depth of the wood. Much as studio furniture-makers and turners had begun to do in the1970s, he consciously sought richly-figured,diseased, or spalted wood to add vitality tothe form. He also began to clean up andrefine the appearance of the chair. To con-struct the front façade, he used biscuit join-ery rather than dowels. Rather than fix theseat within the board perimeter, he gluedcorner blocks along the inside of the backand sides to reinforce joints and provide aplatform on which the seat could rest. Slot-ted metal L-brackets attached to the cornerblocks and the underside of the seat allow theseat to float, fixed to the front seat rail andexpanding across the grain within the backand sides. Around 2001 he eliminated theawkward back cleat, dovetailed the drawers,and slightly enlarged the handhold, which healso tapered slightly in thickness towards theouter edge. Parlaying his experience in con-structing Rosen’s sharp edged sculpturalforms, he began in 2002 to develop jigs thatwould ensure the optimal gluing and fasten-ing of different boards that comprised theframe and sought to eliminate the need forscrews. He initially developed this techniquefor the smaller child’s versions, and hasrecently applied this approach to the largerversions. Instead of screwing the sides to theback and covering up the countersunk screwswith plugs, he began to rely on tight gluejoints. The result is a smooth, exactly facetedexterior emphasized by the warm oil finish.

The oil finish and the rounded edges com-bine with the various angles of the planes toprovide a surprisingly comfortable seat, evenwithout a squab.

Starting in the mid-1990s, Fisher beganto focus on the lambing chair as his “signa-ture” object, just as the rocker had becomeSam Maloof ’s. Like his historical predeces-sors, he has developed a number of differ-ent sizes, including baby, toddler, adolescent,and adult, although none are used in theoriginal manner as close-stools or seats forthe old or sick. Scaling the chair up or downallows him to maintain his “brand,” sincethe shape of the crest, wings, armrests, andfront skirt remains the same. In addition tothe visual coherence of a family line oflambing chairs, Fisher also found that a con-centration on a particular form providesflexibility in his work, as he began to workin several places: in 1996, he married aFrench woman and began to spend part ofthe year working in France. Until 2001 hesplit time between Brooklyn and France, butin the late summer of that year he shiftedthe American operation to a new shop hebuilt in Poseyville, Indiana. His focus upona specific form allows him to maintain pro-

duction in both locales. Due to his past frus-trations with galleries and in response to hisperipatetic lifestyle, Fisher has turned awayfrom traditional representation and insteadsought new avenues for marketing. In orderto showcase his work, explain the derivationof the term “lambing chair,” and to establisha national and even international presence,he developed a website (www.lamb-ingchair.com).

Kenneth Fisher’s lambing chairs arehardly carpenter-made box chairs quicklynailed together from common woods, butrather the culmination of a life spent seekinga personal voice in the field of studio furni-ture. After struggling to make a living mak-ing monumental sculpture or super objectsthat blended highly technical carcase workwith organic details, he has found the idealformat. In his chairs, he has blended the ide-alism of 1960s sculptural furniture, the tech-nical orientation of the 1970s, and theinformed study of historical work. Taking thephilosophy of McNaughton, Frid, and therestoration world, he has developed a fresh,original voice that is not burdened by theself-consciousness of his previous oeuvre.

Edward S. Cooke Jr. is the Charles F. Mont-gomery Professor of American Decorative Artsat Yale University; he is the author of NewAmerican Furniture: Second Generation Stu-dio Furnituremakers and The Maker’s Hand:American Studio Furniture 1940-1990.

W O O D W O R K 59 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5

Selection of chairs in Kenneth Fisher’s Poseyville,

Indiana, shop, 2002. Besides removing the upper

back cleat, he made various less visible changes in

the design and construction process.