The finished chair

In 1906 Charles and Henry Greene were at the launch point of their "ultimate bungalow" period for which they are best known, and through which they achieved heights of Arts & Crafts design unparalleled in many ways. In that year they drew up plans for the Bolton House in Pasadena, and along with it a full set of furniture. In the Bolton House furniture they employed for the first time mahogany as a wood, and square ebony pegs as a design element.

Of the Bolton House furniture, the best known pieces are from the entry hall - a pair of chairs and a table. As the current owner of the Bolton House, I wanted to reproduce this furniture so I could re-create the entry hall exactly as it was in 1907, when Belle Barlow Bush (the first occupant of the house) received the original furniture from the workshop of the Hall brothers, and placed it for the first time just inside the front door.

In early 2010 I commissioned Richard Weigand to reproduce this furniture. Fortunately, an entry hall chair and the table had survived the last 103 years and were on display at the Huntington. The Huntington kindly allowed me to inspect these pieces at close range, carefully measuring and photographing their details. Armed with this data, Richard was able to reproduce the entry hall chairs to the exact dimensions and with the exact finishing details employed by the Hall brothers in 1907. Richard used old-growth Honduras mahogany, from a large log salvaged from a river bottom in Honduras, to come as close as possible to replicating the look and feel of the original chairs.

Richard's pair of chairs are now in place in the entry hall of the Bolton House, and they contribute significantly to re-creating the look and the atmosphere of the house when it was first built by Greene & Greene. Richard is a master woodworker, and the chairs are a work of art. I am extremely pleased with the results.

Tom Reitze
The Bolton House
Pasadena, CA

Gluing up the final was a challenge. There’s nothing square except a couple sides on the legs, but that only helps to see that the clamping hasn’t distorted the chair and that it sits right on the floor. As in all the steps of this chair nothing can be taken for granted. I found doing this that a certain amount of tweaking of the joints and the fitting of the seat was the order of the day. Unlike the way I do most mortise and tenon joints with a real tight fit, these have to be snug but nothing close to tight. It took hours of tweaking to get it right for glue up and in the end it took 10 minutes to glue it up. The clamps didn’t have to get cranked down as the fits were all good. I used an epoxy glue with a working time of an hour, in case I needed it to make adjustments, but none were needed. Whew.

Here's the original chair and a picture of the walnut prototype (the second of three prototypes completed) side by side.

Walnut Prototype Back

Walnut Prototype Details

Walnut Prototype Front

Where we are with the chair: I worked out most of the joinery and tricks on the pre-prototype chair I did in Cherry. Now I’m duplicating those pieces and tweaking the aesthetics of each piece while making a walnut prototype. Maybe it’s my personal work habits that are killing me, but it seems I can’t slip into the slightest daydream or automaticity but the chair jumps up and bites me. I’m working hard at learning to question every cut from every angle and verify every piece as correct, on the right side and the right end for the cut. There is nothing that repeats along those lines. Very tough mentally.

I have some contemporary Honduran mahogany for the reproduction of this Greene and Greene chair coming to do another prototype. This one will be sent to the owner to approve and to include in a photo shoot being done at the house for an upcoming magazine article. The results of that will go into the final chairs. Wide old growth mahogany isn't easy to find but I think I've found some. As soon as I have the word from the owner, I'll be getting started on the final chairs. The latest estimate in for that wood to arrive the end of July.

Bolton house entry hall as it is today.

The "prototype" of the Bolton House chair Richard has made, as a study to work out all of its intricacies, looks terrific! It has exactly the right proportions and feel.

One of the two original Bolton House entry hall chairs is part of the permanent Greene & Greene exhibit at the Huntington museum in San Marino, CA. After getting permission from the owner of the chair, I spent two long sessions measuring and photographing every detail of it. This was then translated into a series of detailed scale drawings that are being used by Richard to re-create the chair exactly as it was designed by the Greenes and constructed by the Hall brothers around 1907.

Richard plans to use old-growth Honduras mahogany (recently recovered logs that were submerged in a river in Central America) to create the chairs. The wood should come very close to what the Hall brothers used a century ago.

I'm excited about how the project is going, and at the prospect of re-creating the Bolton House entry hall exactly as it looked when the house was first built 103 years ago.

Tom

Front View

Back View

Side View

A note from the furniture maker to the owner of the Bolton house follows:

I’ve done nothing with respect to the aesthetics of this chair yet. It’s all been just cutting the pieces to get them to work together.

Yes, I’ve marked the seat with heavy pencil to be sure the grain goes the other way! To save wood on this one it was more economical to cut the seat this way, and I figured it’d be tossed eventually anyway as it is a very tough piece to fit. The interesting thing with this chair is every piece has so many details to tend to its easy to forget one in the process. Which is why this is a pre prototype chair. I’ve still got some tweaking to do with this one to get the parts fully correct. Then I want to take each part and duplicate it. This time paying attention to the aesthetic of the piece and the whole. Once they are all correct I want to glue up it up, as that whole process has something to say I’m sure.

Once I get a passable final chair I’ll be ready to make the keepers. That old growth wood is (relatively) expensive. Probably running about a grand a chair. I’ve had email with the company and in June they expect to have some that will be wide enough for the one piece seat.

There is supposed to be a Cuban strain growing on some island. I have the website but it’s a bit more costly than the old growth Honduran and I believe it was Honduran that was used originally for the chairs.

The other thing is the moisture content. I need to get the wood and let it acclimate to my shop for at least a couple of weeks. Even then I need to be sure it’s dry enough to make a match to the humidity level in the house, which being a desert is no doubt dryer than mine.

All things to be considered as we progress.

Richard

Side View

Piles of wood from the attempts along with Gina, one of the shop dogs

I just housed the tenons on the headcrest and it’s close but will work I think. If the housing (which pushes the cuts closer to the edges) doesn’t hold up on the prototypes I think a regular mortise and tenon (without the housing) would be fine and probably more like what they would have done. We had already decided to use that technique on the back slats as they enter the headcrest, so that all would be consistent. If the tenons are well cut it would be very difficult to tell them from a housed tenon.

Every piece of this chair has to be painstakingly figured, measured and cut. Not one is the same as any other one, so it is as far away from a mass produced chair as one can get. Figuring out how each piece was cut is time consuming and a challenge, but it’s getting easier.

I consider the work a rare opportunity to learn.

I struggle with what the thinking was with the chair back when it was designed. What was it the brothers wanted? A challenge, something really unique or were they just showing off?

Back view

Front View

Back View

Now with the correct drawings to hand the chair is beginning to take shape.

Drawing table along with first prototype

The first prototype was built in 2009. When the owner of the Bolton house looked at photos, he said, this is not correct. Thus began the long process of getting permissions and approvals to get an audience with one of the original Bolton hall chair currently in the permanent Greene and Greene collection at the Huntington Libary in Pasadena, CA.

The chair is underway at last! It's a time consuming difficult project as there's rarely a right angle in the chair.

I've been working from the current Bolton home owner's drawings. Drawings he did recently after permission was obtained from the Museum and the current chair owners. The drawings are wonderfully detailed but require some translation into working drawings. Calculating the exact angles is a real task. Housed tenons are a blessing and a curse. A blessing because they can hide any inaccuracy in the angle, but a curse because you can't have any.

At first glance it's a simple chair with dramatic lines, but getting into it has built an even greater respect for both the Greenes and the Halls. There's nothing simple at all about this chair.

My current goal is to work the prototype backwards and forwards to just learn how they actually built the piece. Once I'm there I'll get the old growth Honduran mahogany they used and start on the final chairs. So far it's a frustrating but wonderful learning experience."

Here's an interesting audio link about the chair.

http://www.gamblehouse.org/nnb/object/502.html

Pictures of progress coming soon. Stay tuned.

The Greene brothers, Charles and Henry, are well known Arts & Crafts architects from the early 1900s. They built several houses in the Pasadena, CA area. Probably the most famous is the Gamble house which is now owned by the state and open to the public with daily docent tours. It’s exceptional in terms of the artistry of the woodworking from furniture to cabinetry, stair railings and built-ins along with stained glass.

Another of the Greene and Greene homes in Pasadena, CA is the Bolton house. The current owner has been thinking of replicating the hall furniture, designed by the brothers, taking it back to exactly as it was in about 1906. Richard has won this commission and we are thrilled.

There will be several pieces built over the next year starting with two hall chairs. The two original chairs have different owners and are separated today but both survived. One tours on occasion with the Smithsonian and the other is in the permanent collection of Greene & Greene designed furniture at the Huntington Library (Art Collection and Botanical Garden) along with other Greene designed furniture in Pasadena, CA.

A picture of the original Bolton chair is shown above as it was when it was auctioned off by Christies some years ago.

We will chronicle the building of the chairs and other furniture when it begins in the next couple of months. Please follow along with us and feel free to give us your comments and feedback.