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There are chairs — and then there are one-off, handcrafted heirlooms, writes architect
WHO’S been sitting in my chair?” asked the three bears, after Goldilocks had splintered Baby Bear’s chair into smithereens on her jaunt into the woods that day.
Chairs of a woodland variety, hand-made, and to your size are an unusual find and
I’m sure Goldilocks was mesmerised by the pieces.
I imagine they were the sort of forest-tofloor pieces that craftsman Garry Marcham of Goose Island Workshop in Co Kerry makes. His work features curved high backs and joint detailing with wooden screws or dowlings and different tones of wood. Each one is an heirloom.
In the real world, bespoke chairs are mostly sourced for medical recliners or orthopedic metal-framed chairs. Back problems caused by furniture aren’t uncommon and, as we’re all beginning to find out, working from home on a kitchen stool can make you pine for an office chair (no pun intended).
Garry knows all about back problems. A tree surgeon, gardener, carpenter, diver and general woodsman and builder, he’s had his share of injuries. So he takes how you sit seriously. When he makes a chair, he first observes how the person uses it. He chooses from three similar bases but varies the legs and surrounds for each chair.
Each piece of wood is chosen for its grain and the job it has to do in a piece of furniture. Like all those devoted to the Arts and Crafts movement, Garry believes that a well-made chair, or table (he makes those too) will enhance the lives of those who choose to live with it.
Next, he places wedges around and under the person, so both feet can rest comfortably on the ground, and the back is at a slight incline. (Yes, I’ve immediately corrected my posture.) Then he tweaks accordingly. He learnt this approach, he says, by watching birds and how they emerge from their nests, perching on the edge, until they leave entirely. Balance and core stability, he says, are really important to sitting correctly.
His work is rooted in a love of nature and he takes enormous care over sourcing, using native ash and only importing hardwoods from sustainable sources. He never uses wood from the rainforest unless it’s to recycle it.
When he fells a tree, he cuts the root so that three more trunks will grow from the stump, and so improves the natural habitat of the forest. He sources from many places, including native ash from Kerry which he says produces a better, more ‘bendy’ variety of wood.
He set up Goose Island Workshop to make kitchens and, he says, laughing, “I still suffer from kitchens.” But, he adds, he will survive lockdown thanks to them. The ‘Goose’ comes from his love of watching the arrival of geese for winter on the beech trees in his part of Kerry, while the ‘Island’ is a nod to those kitchens.
Outside of lockdown days, Garry runs workshops at his studio in Inchaloughra on the Dingle peninsula, where he teaches beginners how to split logs, turn and finish their own stool over two days, with five-day courses aimed at making a ‘Sack back’ chair. He aims to restart these courses when restrictions permit.
Garry himself grew up near a small coppice in Berkshire in England, and arrived in Kerry in 1997 to work as a diver for a local company run by Ronnie and Pat Fitzgibbon on the Maharees. Two years later, he met their niece Caroline Fitzgibbon, a mural artist. That was that.
“I knew by her smile,” he tells me, “if you’re lucky enough to encounter such a thing.”
Not unlike Garry’s own chairs — if you’re lucky enough to buy one, you’ll never look at another.
Or sit in one. Legs on the floor, a slight incline and head relaxed.