Marchbank Chairworks
A finished bow-back Windsor chair standing alone in a white room with a bare wooden floor.

Hardwick, Vermont · since 2013

Windsor chairs from riven ash.

Made one at a time, sixty a year, from logs split along the grain. The book is nine months long.

Caspian · comb-back · 42 × 21 × 19 in

The wait

Nine months.

The book currently runs nine months, and it does not shorten for a larger order. A chair here begins as a section of white ash log, split along its length with a froe rather than sawn, so that every leg and spindle follows the fibre from end to end. Split stock is turned and shaved while it is still wet, then dried slowly in a warm box before it goes together. The drying cannot be hurried without checking the wood, and the joinery depends on it: a bone-dry tenon driven into a seat that still holds some moisture tightens as the seat shrinks around it, and stays tight.

There are two of us. We make the chairs in the order they were booked, and we do not skip the queue. A deposit of a third holds a place. When your chair is under way we send photographs of the seat and the undercarriage and a finishing date, and most chairs leave the shop within a fortnight of that date. If the wait is a problem, say so and we will tell you honestly where you would fall.

A single finished Windsor chair in an otherwise empty white room, morning light across the floorboards.
An early bow-back, delivered 2016. Lampblack over ash.

The catalogue

Four forms. Each is made to the sizes below unless you ask otherwise.

Comb-back side chair

Caspian

PartQtyInchesmmTimber

Timbers and finishes

    $1,850 in oiled ash · from 9 months

    Configure and request this chair

    Green wood

    The tree does most of the work, if you let it.

    1. A froe driven into the end of a green ash billet on a riving brake, the split opening along the grain, shavings on the floor.

      Riving

      A straight ash log, cut to length and split with a froe and a club. The split follows the fibre, so a riven leg has no short grain anywhere along it. Sawn stock does not get that.

    2. A wall rack of shaved ash spindles drying in rows, the nearest ones in focus.

      Turning and shaving

      Legs are turned wet on the lathe; spindles are shaved at the horse with a drawknife and a spokeshave. Wet ash cuts like cheese. Everything is left a little oversize and racked to dry.

    3. Seat: 8–10 % moisture
      Tenons: kiln-dried, 4–6 %
      Legs and stretchers: 12 %
      Assembly: same day the tenons leave the box

      Drying and assembly

      Tenons go in the warm box for a week and are driven the day they come out. The seat is scooped, bored at its compound angles, and the legs wedged from above. Nothing is glued that would not hold without it.

    Commissions

    Choose the chair, the timber, the seat height. The price and the date follow.

    Chair
    Timber and finish

    Seat height

    Arms
    Price$1,850
    Lead time9 months
    Deposit$617

    No payment now. We reply within a week with a place in the book and a deposit note.

    The workshop

    A barn on the Lamoille, two benches, one lathe.

    Where

    The shop is a converted dairy barn on Mill Street, a few hundred yards from the river. The log pile is out the back under a roof; the drying box is the old milk room. Visitors are welcome on Fridays, and by arrangement otherwise. Bring boots.

    Who

    Ellis Marchbank started the shop in 2013 after four years with a chairmaker in Herefordshire. Tam Roy joined in 2019 and does most of the turning and all of the milk paint. Between us: sixty chairs a year, most of them Caspians.

    What else

    Riving brakes and shaving horses for other makers, to order. Repairs to old Windsors, including re-seating. Two weekend chair classes a year, in March and October, six people each. Ash logs, when we have more than we need.