A Little Irish

Almost a year ago, Josiah over at The Crooked Stool Workshop wrote about the Leitrim chair, made by John Surlis of Leitrim county Ireland. You can watch the Hands docuseries episode on it here. It’s a wonderful video and I’ve watched it multiple times.

After reading about the chair and watching the video, I quickly added it to my bucket list.

During my off-and-on research phase, I found a few more references for the chair. Chiefly among them is a build video, of sorts, featuring Charles Perpoil making a variation of the chair. Rather than flood the rest of this post with all the other resources I dug up, I’ll compile them at the end.

Between drawings, the videos, and layout computer, I came up with an adaptation that walked a fine line between staying true to the original but also incorporation some sligtht changes.

The Seat

In the Hands video, the seat is a trapezoid with a very slight curve at the front, but at some point this must’ve changed. Perpoil took measurements directly from a Leitrim chair and the rear of his seat features the same radius as the back rest and the front is straight. The drawings (in metric) depict the reverse: a radiused front and straight back. I really the look of the Perpoil reproduction, so that’s what I went with.

The drawings depict a seat size of ~13” wide at the back, 17-1/4” wide at the front, and roughly 13-5/8” deep. That ‘felt’ a little small, so I bumped everything up to 14” wide (at rear) x 18” wide (at front) and 14” deep.

The Sticks

Surlis’ chair in the Hands video had the back sticks tilted at an unknown angle, with what appears to be a zero degree sightline. The measured drawings and Perpoil’s have the back sticks with a slight fan. Since that’s a technique I’ve wanted to try for a while, I went with compound angles for the back sticks. This is an area that I pushed a bit past ‘tradition’ and used 5deg off 90 for the inner back sticks, and 10deg off 90 for the outer sticks with a back tilt of 10deg. I like the look, but it’s much more extreme than either of the reference chairs.

Back Rest

The drawings come up short RE the curvature of the back rest, so I had to guess and went with an 18” radius for the inside face (I had used that radius for our dining chairs and it feels good).

The Legs

As mentioned below, the workshops that do recreations of this chair appear to use a 10deg drilling angle for the legs (unknown sightline). For ease of construction, and what I imagine early chairmakers might’ve done, I connected the opposing leg mortises to make a sightline. I roughly modeled this in layout computer and the 10deg angle, while appearing to be historically accurate, was just too shallow for my eye. I bumped it up to 13deg for a little more rake and splay.

Another departure was the leg shape. The Leitrim chair’s legs are shaved round, but I really like the look of a faceted leg and went with tapered octagons.

With all my rough measurements and angles, I decided to make a 1/2 scale model to better visualize it.

1/2 Scale Leitrim chair interpretation

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the shape and the proportions, but the rear leg rake is concerning. I’m worried that the chair will be a little too ‘tippy’ with how much those legs are tucked in compared to the back rest (which is roughly where the sitter’s shoulders will be).

Even though I’ve already made a few deviations from the traditional form, I don’t want to make any more adjustments until I’ve made it full scale, so it was time to get some lumber and make a chair.

Leitrim Chair Resources

Measured drawing - This was made, from best I can tell, using Perpoil’s measurements that he took before making the chair in the above linked video, though there are some discrepancies, notably the front and rear of the seat. Perpoil’s construction is a radiused rear and flat front, while the drawings are the reverse. It’s a solid place to start, but is fairly lacking when it comes to angles.

Leitrim Chair Workshop - There is a photo gallery at the bottom of the page that has a collection of build photos as well as front, profile, and iso views of the chair. Eagle-eyed readers will note the 10deg guide block used for the legs. I couldn’t bring myself to use that shallow of an angle for the legs because I felt the chair needed more rake for stability.