Analysis: a new exhibition shows what Irish student furniture makers can do with heritage designs and concepts
What do the furniture makers of the future think of the furniture of the past? And what can the past teach us not only about style, but of sustainability? Students at the School of Design and Creative Arts in ATU Connemara recently worked with the National Museum of Ireland on a project where the students re-imagined an ancient Irish chair design for the present day, and learned much along the way. It gave lecturers the opportunity to showcase an iconic Irish design, the Sligo/Tuam chair, with a view to using it as a case study to inspire their imaginative designs for the present.
Ireland's furniture heritage
Ireland has a strong traditional vernacular furniture heritage. Vernacular architecture and furniture organically emerges in cultures without the formal intervention of those formally educated in architecture or furniture design. Instead, it is the result of local crafts people working with materials available to them, and passing on skills and knowledge to the next generation.
Mostly emerging from the 19th to the mid 20th century, the overall look of Irish vernacular architecture and furniture is simple and functional. Many of us will associate it with what we once knew rural homes to look like, until it slowly faded away from the late 20th century with Irish people eagerly adapting more global furniture design trends.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's History Show, design historian Claudia Kinmonth talks about her book Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings, 1700 - 2000 and the vanishing social history she found within Irish farmhouses and cabins
A timber famine
Irish vernacular furniture was a tradition that survived in the face of adversity. Lack of money, materials and severe timber shortages did not stop people in Ireland furnishing their homes. Until Elizabethan times Ireland had abundant ancient deciduous woodland, and was noted throughout Europe for its broad-leaved forests.
But between 1600 and 1800 most of the ancient Irish forests were felled leading to what the folklorist Kevin Danaher described as a timber "famine" and Ireland became renowned for its lack of trees. Despite reforestation initiatives even in recent years, it remains one of the least forested areas of Europe. While there had once been a wonderful Irish appreciation of trees, this death of the forests meant that the native Irish lost this knowledge of trees and significantly, skills in woodcraft.
Timber became a scarce commodity, and local supplies were so poor that cheap timber began to be imported to Ireland. At times throughout Irish history, even timber for coffins was unavailable or considered too expensive. This general lack of timber impacted furniture and interiors greatly in Ireland. Faced with this scarcity, how did the makers and users of Irish vernacular furniture react? With ingenuity, a willingness to recycle, upcycle, use alternative materials and think outside the box when it came to furniture.
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From RTÉ Archives, Ann Binchy reports for RTÉ News on a furniture making and design seminar in Dublin in 1962
Irish solutions to the Irish problem of scarce timber
Little adaptations and innovations were small victories over the lack of timber in Irish cottages, and these influenced the overall look of our Irish ancestors' homes. Although scarce, furniture was symbolic of respectability, and every home had to have a table, some sort of dresser, a settle, beds and fireside chairs.
Travelling skilled carpenters often made furniture in exchange for food and accommodation. These were usually called in for the making of large pieces, such as settles and dressers, which were commonly made on site. There were also so called hedge makers, amateur carpenters who would make small primitive pieces of furniture (such as 'hedge’ chairs) using small or green timbers.
Furniture would have been made from any available timber, recycled from old or disused furniture and "found" timbers such as bogwood and driftwood. Green timber was also used in furniture construction, where readily available species such as salix or willow (known as salleys in Ireland) would be coppiced and used for furniture parts and weaving.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Countrywide in 2016, Frances Shanahan visits a straw craft exhibition at the Slieve Gullion Forest Park to see how straw can be used for making furniture
The scarcity of timber led to timber furniture accruing a skeletal appearance due to the sparsity of its use; for example in what some antique dealers’ term today as Irish Famine chairs. Cheap sheeted timber, usually imported pine, was used for most furniture and paint became important in disguising faults of such wood. Paint also acted as a preservative and furniture was frequently overpainted, which had the effect of preserving pieces for years. Bright colours were used to counteract dimly lit interiors. Paint effects such as (graining and ‘scumble’) were used to make low-cost pine look like dearer hardwoods.
An early circular economy
Interiors evolved to make the most of cheaper solutions and multifunction was a big part of Irish vernacular furniture: settes convertable into beds; foldaway beds; dressers that doubled as chicken coops to keen hens safe and warm at night. Alternative materials were used in interiors, particularly straw, which was used to make cosy armchairs or seats of súgan chairs. Dry sods of turf could be stacked and fashioned into a settle. Such objects were cheap and replaced more frequently than ones made from timber.
This was a forerunner in many ways of today's move towards a 'circular economy', where resources are re-used or recycled as much as possible, and the generation of waste is reduced. What was happening then in Irish rural households was the circular economy before it was ever defined. People made do and mended, reused and upcycled, used healthy, natural local materials and availed of local craft skills. Today’s student designers can learn much from this approach.
The Sligo/Tuam chair
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From Edwina Guckian, Rosa Meehan from the National Museum of Country Life and craftsman Charles Perpoil on the origins of the Leitrim chair and how to make this piece of furniture
In addition, not too long ago in Ireland every county or region had a distinct style for making furniture. Distinct styles emerged as some communities incubated specific crafts and fashions and this sometimes led to regions giving names to specific furniture types (for example, the Sligo chair, the Antrim chair, the Leitrim chair etc).
The Tuam/Sligo chair is a three-legged chair with a very distinctive design. This type of chair has three legs, a narrow backrest and a uniquely designed triangular seat-shape. The chair back is made by extending the back leg of the chair. No nails are used, and instead pegged joints and through-wedged tenons are used in its construction. They can come with or without arms. The three legs meant it was useful for uneven clay or flagged floors.
By no means solely synonymous with the locations of Sligo or Tuam, these are just the dual names the chair has accrued. Although the earliest reference to the chair is from Sligo, the traditional production ‘centre’ was around Tuam in Galway, and most of the original chairs in the National Museum’s collection are from Tuam. It was once common around the western part of the country. How far back the chair design goes cannot be certain, but one can picture it gracing the interiors of tower houses and farmhouses alike.
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From National Museum of Ireland, introduction to the Our Irish Chair: Tradition Revisited at the National Museum Of Ireland, Country Life
The project
In 2019, the National Museum of Ireland (Country Life) approached ATU with a view to including students’ designs in their upcoming exhibition Our Irish Chair: Tradition Revisited. The exhibition would showcase some of the beautiful antique Sligo/Tuam chairs in the museum’s collection and the idea was that students’ contemporary versions would be displayed alongside them. Second year students of the B.Sc. in Furniture Design and Manufacture programme were given a detailed design brief and shown the museum’s collection before coming up with their own contemporary Sligo/Tuam chair solutions for the modern Irish home.
ATU Connemara provided native Irish oak for the chairs which came from Borris House in Co. Carlow, and students were made aware of the site’s practice of continuous cover forestry management which has considerable environmental benefits. As part of their studies, students were shown how trees are converted by being sawn into boards, then kiln and air dried until ready for use, with this all happening onsite utilising the campus’s wood conversion and kiln drying unit.
This aspect allowed students, as woodworkers of the future, a unique insight and appreciation into the material they work with. This education of materials is part of the ethos at ATU Connemara, every year our students are involved in tree planting, and sow acorns and at the time of their graduation four years later are presented with their oak saplings. This all gives them a better understanding of timber and a greater appreciation of sustainability concerns.
The students undertook this project during the 2020/21 academic year under difficult circumstances caused by the pandemic. In the first phase of the project, each student developed and delivered a design concept and prototype piece of furniture, with presentations taking place online. When public health guidelines allowed them to do so they went on to make their own chairs in the workshops.
The work of 15 student designers is currently on display at the National Museum of Ireland. Many of the students' designs stayed true to the original three-legged Sligo/Tuam skeleton, with imaginate inclusions which amounted to a diverse collective whole. Matthew Shakespeare opted for a sleek angular take on the original, Dana Beier created an upholstered version with soft edges and Matthew Sexton added arms and an angled back to increase user comfort.
Barbara Doran looked beyond the form to include a nod to historical context. Imagining the rich conversation that took place in Irish homes and how her chair might facilitate this, Doran's chair is designed so that users straddle while leaning on the chairback, enabling a face-to-face conversation with a user on a matching chair. Thoroughly thoughtful and interesting designs, all show how an iconic piece of Irish furniture from the past can be reinvented for the present and even the future.
The author acknowledges the work of ATU's Anthony Clare, Davin Larkin and Paul Leamy in overseeing the project and the work of Rosa Meehan, exhibition curator at National Museum of Ireland, Country Life.
Dr McGarry will be discussing the Sligo/Tuam chair design in a modern context at the National Museum of Ireland, Country Life, Turlough Park, Castlebar, Co Mayo on Saturday March 4th at 2pm
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
