by Elia Bizzarri | Oct 15, 2023 | Classes | 2 Comments
Last week's wheelbarrow making class with Peter Ross was a great success. And a lot of fun. First everyone spent a day moving my firewood around, so they could learn the proper use of a wheelbarrow. (I'm mostly kidding.) My mentor Curtis Buchanan took the class,...
by Elia Bizzarri | Aug 19, 2023 | Classes | 0 Comments
Boy, I've been busy! I taught a wonderful class with Eric Cannizzaro at Penland, NC in July, building Jennie Alexander ladderback chairs. Then my wife Morgan and I toured around for ten days, visiting family, friends and Lost Art Press in Cincinnati. ...
by Elia Bizzarri | Jun 13, 2023 | Classes | 4 Comments
My wife Morgan and I got back from our honeymoon in Italy a couple weeks ago. We focused on eating and walking, but I did see a 15th century riven-oak square thing (wardrobe?) in a museum, so I know they did have respectable trees once upon a time. ...
by Elia Bizzarri | Feb 20, 2023 | Built for Speed Book Project, Classes | 5 Comments
Last week I had four friends over for a trial run of a class set in the year 1803, building a copy of Samuel Wing's loop back chair. It was a great week. We all learned a lot, none more than me. Thanks to Damon O'Gan for the black-and-white photos below: We split,...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 29, 2022 | Classes | 0 Comments
For the first time in three years, I am teaching a chair class. Or really a chair-and-table class. I'm co-teaching with my friend Eric Cannizzaro for two weeks at Penland in the NC mountains. Come spend your days building chairs and your evenings watching the...
by Elia Bizzarri | Sep 21, 2022 | Classes | 6 Comments
"I was talking with Dave Sawyer last week and I asked him if you could go work with him. He said 'yes.'" I was standing in Curtis Buchanan's garden, helping him pick vegetables. I had been apprenticing with Curtis for six years and he was worried that I was...
by Elia Bizzarri | Aug 26, 2022 | Classes | 1 Comment
My blacksmith friend Peter Ross called last week. "I bought a couple lathes in an auction. Could you help me move them this afternoon?" This can be a fearsome request, for Peter has a habit of buying machinist lathes weighing in the thousands of...
by Elia Bizzarri | Feb 25, 2022 | Chair Stories, Classes | 5 Comments
As most of you know, I'm at Curtis Buchanan's designing a Loop Back Arm chair. On the second day we had a visitor from NC, Reid Gamble who has been apprenticing with laddarback chairmaker Lyle Wheeler. First we bored for the bent stretcher. Curtis had to climb...
by Elia Bizzarri | Feb 23, 2022 | Chair Stories, Classes | 3 Comments
I am spending the next few days visiting with Curtis and Marilyn Buchanan. Eric Cannizzaro is here too. During the day we're working an a new loop back arm chair design for which Curtis hopes to publish a set of plans. At night, we are eating Marilyn's good food and...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 27, 2021 | Chair Stories, Classes | 2 Comments
Yesterday, my father-in-law and I delivered a set of five chairs for Josh and his wife's new house. We met at a horse park and transferred the blanket-wrapped chairs into Josh's car. As I wrapped the chairs last week, I remembered this story: It was a...
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