(reel clicking) - You'll be dreaming of
spending part of the cool winter relaxing in front
of the fireplace in a Windsor chair
by Rich Grell. It will cost you $250 up,
depending on the style. And how available
are these chairs? Well, he's now taking
orders for Christmas. - The Windsor Chair is something that you just can't
go buy in a store. You can't buy a handmade
chair that's built around you to fit you,
your size, the color, the style that you want. So I'm trying to bring back being able to build chairs,
custom made for the people. The wood comes outta my woods. It's not processed, it's
just cut down and split. It's certain bit of
self-satisfaction and pride that comes from
cutting the tree down, bringing it home, splitting it, turning into a
piece of furniture that you can make
your living off of. - [Narrator] It takes
Grell a full week to make one of his
Windsor Chairs. If he used power tools, he
could turn out several chairs in that length of time, but he would never think
of such mass production. - If they were made by machines then they would
have no character. They would be too perfect. They just would not
look good at all in a room with antiques. They have to be made by hand. The hand tools,
the same processes that the pioneers used in
order to make them authentic. And that's how I
build the chairs. (film reel clicking) (gentle bright guitar music) (birds chirping)
(gentle bright guitar music) - This was a small farm. Hudson had a lot of
just small little farms. Some of the farmers
would have other jobs, but we had pigs and
chickens, sold eggs. I grew pumpkins and sold them. Early on I was an
entrepreneur on a small scale. (gentle bright guitar music) Probably my earliest
recollection is when I was probably
three years old, and my grandfather would
give me tools that, because I wanted
to build things, and my hands were just
constantly making things. I had to pound nails, I
had to saw, I had to cut. I was just driven
to create things. And I was encouraged
to that by a father and grandfather that just
would help be patient with me. And when I wanted
the little toy tools that were being sold
at the store for kids, I never received those. I got real tools that were
already very old to begin with, sharpened up and ready to use, and then I was educated
and enlightened on how to actually use the
tools and to take care of them. And that has been
the basis for my work that I've spent my
entire life doing. My name is Richard Grell, and
I am a Windsor Chair maker. (gentle bright guitar music) (birds chirping)
(leaves rustling) My ability to work with my hands was something that
I wanted to do with, or at least more of a
mechanical or engineering sort of thought, as
far as a career goes. And that's what
we all go through when we're teenagers
trying to figure out what it is that we wanna be. (plane whirring) - [Narrator] Every
second of every day an average of five
airplanes are taking off or landing somewhere
in these United States. - At the time, in the 60s, the aerospace industry
seemed to be where everything in the world
was going to be happening. And I had a brief career
working for the airlines doing inspections on airliners when they would come in at
night and doing all the things and running around and
checking everything out, which I thought was going to be where I would spend
my life and my career. But the airlines went on strike. They shut down. So they furloughed
everyone that was working. And at that time, I decided that I would try to start
this business of furniture with the intention of teaching
myself how to make chairs. (bright music) (tools scraping) - Chair making itself is
this real specialized craft. It's something that
goes back millennia. The Windsor Chairs,
interestingly enough, they had kind of
humble beginnings. They started out
as he's kinda like what we call today stick chairs. Pretty primitive, country. They just took a plank, used an ax to carve
some little sticks, put 'em in the bottom, and that's as opposed
to fancy carved chairs that the rich would've used. These stick chairs were more
the common person's chair, but Windsors themselves,
they were much refined from that kind of
primitive stick chair. There's just a small
amount of wood, almost nothing there. It's gotta be sturdy,
it's gotta be comfortable, and it's gotta be beautiful. - Making the chair was
the first challenge, teaching myself, spending
times in museums, restorations,
private collections, and just educating myself
now about the chairs and how they were made. And then I had to figure
out, was there a market? How would I sell them? And there was no roadmap. This was still before the
country's bicentennial in '76, which was a big catalyst
to get people interested in traditional American crafts. I spent evenings after
I would work in my shop, going out and speaking
to groups for nothing about Windsor Chairs so that I could help
them educate themselves about the historic aspect,
the engineering aspect, all the elements of
the Windsor Chair. (hammer banging) (bright music) - My mother was an
interior designer. Because of that,
I was exposed to what she did for a
living and career. She shared the same passion
that she had with me, and I think that
passion is more innate. You realize, I did early on,
that that's what I enjoyed. When Rich and I met
we only dated 79 days and then we were married. So basically we really
didn't know each other. We just knew that we
had similar interests. He had already established
his business for three years. To continue that I
just kinda jumped in and started helping him, as far as manage the business. I liked to do creative
graphic design, so I would design our brochures and even simple things
like the price tags. And when we would do shows,
I would design the booth. He's the craftsman, he's the chair maker. But I was always combing
through books, looking, and I would find a photograph
of a historic period Windsor and flash it in front of him. What about this? And... Okay, I'm gonna make that. We'll do that one. - I'm Richard Grell, and I'm demonstrating
Windsor Chair making at the Case-Barlow
Farm Harvest Fest. A beautiful day. Beautiful weather. - I think the first
time I ever saw Richard, he was out doing demonstrations on how to make Windsor Chairs. And then following that, there was this crazy
cult following, almost, of many of my friends and
a lot of people in Hudson that you needed to have a
chair made by Richard Grell. And I love old things. I've always loved old things. So this is my ability to grab a little authentic
piece of the past and have it in my home. And it means more to me because I know the
person who made it. I know the love
that went into it and the personal
attention to detail. - When I try to place Richard, one of the things
I think about him is he is an extension
of this craft tradition that's gone back for
many, many generations. He is not reproducing
Windsor Chairs. He's making his own chairs. They're refinements on chairs
that have gone before him. And when I think
about those chairs and what's really
attractive about them, kinda go back to
this modernist thing that happened in the
early 20th century. One of the things
about that movement was it was the idea that the machine
is the ultimate destination of where mankind is going. And the emphasis was
on let's make products with real sleek surfaces,
flawless surfaces, that don't look like they've
been touched by the human hand. And actually, I think over time people have chafed at that idea that everything we touch is
machine made and perfect. People like to feel like
the feeling of a pebble in a stream or whatever
that nature has touched. And his chairs really reflect
the touch of a human artisan. They've got contours to 'em, that they look like
they've had a life. And when you touch
those and you feel 'em and you look at 'em, you get that sense that
these are the result of nature and a human hand. (gentle guitar music) - When I first started
making the chairs I was following some period
pieces just almost exactly as far as the proportions
and the height of the seat and things like that,
and people like that. And especially in the 70s and the early part
of that time period when people were still
looking at the old chairs. So the chairs had a more
diminutive look to them. They were smaller. And as I progressed in time, and people were
using the chairs, maybe in homes that
the scale was bigger, I kind of would creep up on the thickness and
variations of things so that I sort of adapted
the chairs up a little bit. But I always have given
people the option. So when I build the chair it's made to exactly
what they prefer in their own eye on how they
would like to see the chair. (tools scraping) - Initially we would
start at an outdoor show that he was a part of early,
before we were married, and that was kind
of a rustic show. Our booth was rustic, but it didn't really
complement the chairs. And next thing we were
doing for the show in the following years, we
pretty much built a room, but I always tried to
feature the chairs. I always felt that was
the priority and his work. We've always been a team, even to this day,
we work together. Wait, we usually
have a little space. - Right, but I'm saying. You look at it from out there so you can see what
you're visualize that. The booth is, remember the
booth is a foot or two shorter. - Okay. - Wherever that one
is, we'll put this one. - I think we're both,
by this time in life, pretty aware of our
strengths and our weaknesses. So we, I think for the
biggest part of the time, we do respect each other's
strengths and weaknesses. I know when to defer
to Gay on things. - I mean, I didn't
really like the idea that I had weaknesses. I wanted to think that
I could just do it all. But as you age, you
realize, and you're wiser to your own potential and
what you're capable of. (bright guitar music) - Aba. Look it, remember the... (indistinct) These are some projects
that I'm working on. I call Richard a
meticulous maker, where everything is clean and
neat and in the same spot. And I call myself
a chaotic creator, where I like everything
going on at the same time. So I have a whole bunch of
moldings here that I'm making, I have here. And I have a whole pile over
here that I'm making right now. I'm an emergency physician
at the Cleveland Clinic. I've been there
for about 10 years. And I got into woodworking
about six or seven years ago. I was always a hands-on guy. I always liked doing
things using my hands, which is what I do in my job. Lots of procedures
and things like that. I built this table, which
was really beautiful, hand carved, aprons, a
turned pedestal base. Once the table was done,
I kind of had a dilemma. I didn't want to make
these very ornate chairs and then obstruct the table. So I ended up falling into, researching what
are the options? And I found a guy locally
named Richard Grell who led this master's
class and said, "Hey, we could
work a one on one, "and we can build
a Windsor Chair." I didn't know much about design, and little did I know that
he knew about the design. - The Windsor Chair
has a element of design that is very sculptural. When you look at it, you can
actually see through the chair. So when it is a in a room, you
kind of see things behind it, and it just sort
of is very airy. So it's a very
elegant piece to have in various designs and styles. But they're also very strong. And that goes back to
their origin in England is that the chairs were made, not by cabinet makers
or furniture makers. They were initially made by
turners and wheelwrights. - Wagon makers wanted to
make their wagons very light and very strong so that
you've got your horses, you don't wanna wear 'em out
pullin' around a heavy wagon. You wanna pull as much
freight as possible. And what they did
was they took woods that were exactly the right
strongest species of wood for things like the tongue
or for the axles or whatever. And wagons ended up being built out of multiple kinds of wood. Well, Windsor Chair
makers did the same thing. The seat's made out
of pine or poplar. The legs are made out of maple. The parts that need
to bend and flex like the little
spindles in the back, they're often made
out of ash or oak. So you've got this
hybrid design, and the result is you can make
this chair that's very light. - The skills that were required
to make a strong wagon wheel would be able to
apply to the chairs and give the
strength of a wheel, and yet everything
comes into the seat, like a hub of a wheel and
the spindles and the legs and everything all
emerge from the seat. The elements are
very similar to that. And the strength is
inherent in the engineering and design of the chair. - In order for things
to look pleasing, there's certain rules of design that Richard always talks to, his friend George talks to, is in that back in
Greek and Roman times they had columns
and they had orders, and those are based on what
they considered beautiful. And those have stood
the test of time. What's available
commercially now, Richard calls it
Velveeta cheese. He kind of says that it's
neither Swiss nor mozzarella. It's this newfangled
American cheese. So they take designs and
they just stretch 'em and someone decides that,
hey, this looks good. - [Narrator] The modern designer creates beauty
through simplicity, bringing to active business
a look of casualness, a look of luxury, combining to create a new
look to American efficiency. - For most of our history,
in terms of craft, artisans had three things that
were really important to them as far as what
made something good or what made
something excellent. It had to be sturdy
and long lasting, it had to be functional,
and it had to be beautiful. Those axioms started
to come under fire with the onset of the
Industrial Revolution. There was this term called
form follows function, but the reality of it
was a lot of the function that they built into
things had a lot to do with making the thing mesh
with machine processes. You wanted something
that would work, but you're more interested in, can I put this on an assembly
line and make it very quickly? - I had the opportunity
very early on to sell the chairs to a
company that would market them, but I would have to
change my methods. I would have to be
purchasing parts, doing things that actually
increase the production. And from a dollar standpoint,
it sounded interesting, but I knew that it
would be a compromise. I'm sure that
anything is possible to knock anything off
anymore with technology. With 3D printers, and with CNC, I have no doubt that
that would be the case. I think the problem
is that with people that really would
like to have something that's genuine and signed, your signature, your name,
your association with that and the quality really
becomes the factor, not the duplication
of the piece. I also am not sure
that a CNC or a copier can make the selections
that I make along the way. That's a human factor. I look at, I touch, I feel all
of the pieces of that chair as they're going together
and as I'm selecting the wood - In nature, there's something
called a golden ratio, and it's the hand
to the forearm, the the upper body to
the rest of the body, and when you design furniture
using those proportions, things will look pleasing and
balanced, hence, beautiful. These are golden
ratio calipers courtesy of the
Marc Adam's School. And so this ratio to this
ratio has a pleasing effect. If you can take a look at
the curve at the bottom, how high up should
this curve have been in order to make it pleasing? When you look at it, I think it looks very
pleasing and very balanced. But if you just go ahead
and use the calipers you see that the
peak of the curve comes more or less
within the golden ratio. - Leonardo DaVinci had
a real famous series of paintings he
called Grotesques where he would just
make the nose too big or the ear too big or
the mouth outta position. And he was illustrating
that proportions is really important. Well, it spilled over
into our buildings, it spilled over
into our furniture. A Windsor Chair maker
looks at the spindles on a Windsor Chair, and he's constantly looking
at all the other parts, and he's kinda taking
the same thing, as the parts need to
relate to each other. - And the people that
appreciate my chairs understand and they touch and see
exactly what I'm doing. And if someone does not see that I will encourage them to
go buy the cheaper chair. But for my clients, they really
have an eye for the handwork and the detail that I
put into the chairs. (bright music) Hello, I'm Richard Grell. Welcome to my shop. Just carrying in a
fresh piece of maple to start workin' on
some of the chairs. Might like to come on in and
get a little look of my world and 25 years of
makin' Windsor Chairs. (gentle bright guitar music) - I have tremendous
admiration for Rich. His talents, determination, works harder than
anybody I know. I think of all the work that
he's done for both of us, even though we've
done it together, a lot of the physical part
has been his responsibility. It's hard work. It's not easy being
self-employed, and you... I don't think about it. If I think about it, it's daunting. (gentle bright music) - It's a difficult path. No one says that building
furniture this way is easy or that it's it's the
most efficient way. It's just, it's his
way of doing it. And it's a time honored
way of doing it, but it's very physically taxing. I know for myself,
when I'm using a hands, playing on my workbench,
it gets my heart up. 'Cause it's physical work. It involves sweat and muscle and burnin' lots of calories, and it's quite the process. (gentle bright music) - In a way you can call him a
specialist of a chair maker, but he's not. He makes Windsor Chairs, and Windsor Chair is a
completely different bird than anything else, because there's not a single
flat surface on the chair. You have to be an
expert at joinery. You have to be an
expert at carving. You have to be an
expert on turning. You have to be an
expert on wood movement and wood species and
understanding all of that. I think making a Windsor Chair is like getting your
PhD in woodworking. If you can make a Windsor
Chair, you can do anything. - I always said
my name is carved in the bottom of the seat, and that's how it's gonna be. And if the chairs
are not selling, they're still gonna be
expensive. (laughing) But that's always been the case. that they've just been, we've had clients and people
who appreciate the work. - We have been very,
very, very fortunate. - Yeah. I mean we have more
customers that become friends over the years. - And that's the best part, I
think, of what we do together. And that is the
people we've met. - Yeah. - The experiences we've had, the places we've traveled,
and just the diversity. - He's very gentile, as is Gay, and they're very humble people
who like to do things well. - To him, the wood
is just a medium. I think he's more of an
artist than anything else. When you sit on the chair,
you're sitting on the maker and you know that you're
kind of connecting with the person that
made that piece. The only way you know
that somebody made it is when you see the mill marks,
when you see the tool marks, or you see the inconsistencies
and you know that's human. I'm sure if someone doesn't
have an eye for the beauty or doesn't have an
eye for the design, it wouldn't make a
difference to them. But if someone does
know the difference, it makes you smile when you see
that little finishing touch. - When I think of
Richard as an artisan, I think of him as someone with
a lot of creative freedom. And by that I think
of as different than maybe we think about
creative freedom today. Our idea of freedom today
is you get to choose between a bunch of
options or you go out and you do some
real novel thing. Or in a craft tradition, creative freedom was
something very different. It was choosing the
good over and over again to get to a destination,
to some kind of an ideal. The chairs that he
made 30, 40 years ago I'm sure were different than
the chairs he's making today. And the chairs that he's
gonna make in the future are gonna be closer
to that ideal form that he's been shooting
for all his life. (gentle bright music) - It's so perfectly
straight grained, very few knots of
anything in its life. So we're looking at
perfect straight grain. It's a hickory, which is
one of the best for bending and back spindles. And this is just a
perfect section of
that tree right there. A lot of chair
parts in that tree. (gentle bright music) I think this is my favorite
time of year, in the fall. With the nuts fallin'
and the squirrels busy stashin' everything
away for winter. Light shinin'
through, just barely, comin' through the leaves. Leaves turnin' slowly. (gentle bright music) A lotta years of my life looking at these trees
as they've grown. (gentle bright music) And I love 'em. (gentle bright music) (gentle bright music)
