Windsor chair

Yeah.

So I make contemporary Windsor chairs, which is to say...

And I'm interested in all kinds of chairs and all kinds of furniture, but there's something about a Windsor chair that I kind of am, am in love with.

And all it means to be a Windsor chair is that you have a flat wooden seat, and that all of the elements of the chair are pegged into that flat seat.

Okay.

So the, the legs go inside of holes into the seat.

I think you do need a good amount of understanding of regular woodworking before you start going into 3D.

But I think for me, it's like, like a lot of my hobbies, it doesn't require me to become Nakashima or, you know, Maloof to u- to understand this stuff, but it can make a functional, beautiful piece of furniture.

Today we're excited to have the one and only Greg Pennington as our guest.

Greg is a master Windsor chair maker, outstanding instructor, and all around great guy.

He teaches classes out of his wonderful shop located in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and has written articles on chair making for woodworking publications, and has been featured recently on Charles Brock's PBS show, Volunteer Woodworker.

So welcome to the show, Greg.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Well, um, well, what interested you in Windsor chairs? 'Cause I, I think a lot of us, we, we did the flat work and we did, you know, cabinets and stuff like that, and then all of a sudden we built our first chair and n- that's now all we do.

[laughs]

And th- this particular class was David Wright.

He's a Windsor chair maker from the state of Maine, and he had driven in to teach this class.

And he had a bunch of students in there.

They were making kind of this modern, um...

And so he gets a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction out of actually producing something with his hands.

And so he was building the set T right there.

Sounds like he had built Windsor chairs before.

He said if there's one thing he could do in woodworking, if he was limited to only one, he thinks it would be building Windsor chairs, because they are so beautiful and comfortable.