on the bench just now

i have been turning over a new project, lately. With babies on the brain, I have been surfing baby sites, as one does, and have been blown away by the truckloads of plastic crap that are offered up for sale. Not only is it offered up, there is the implication that if you do not own every last sickly-sweet petroleum-based product, you are a Bad Parent that clearly does not care a Single Hoot for the Safety, Well-Being, or Proper Development of your child, and probably would fricassee it at the first possible opportunity, you heartless, penny-pinching, terrible soul.

There never seems to be mention on any of these sites about phthalates, or the studies being done about their effects on developing nervous systems. Nor is there any mention of the studies that have been done about MDF and particle board and the off-gassing that comes from the formaldehyde-urea resin in these and similar products that not only does quantifiable harm to developing nervous systems, but even to adult systems. Nope, just an exhortation to buy the plastic high chair, the plastic bathtub, the particle-board changing table.

Christ.

So, as I say, I have started on a new project. It started with a high chair, which of course we “need.” It seems to be beside the point that for about 200,000 years the concept of a chair was unknown, let alone a high chair. It is really only in the last 4500 years or so that purpose built objects have existed for sitting on, let alone “high” ones for babies. There is not even reliable evidence of this furniture type until about 200 years ago, which, let’s be honest, is WAY after humans started having babies. Nonetheless, we “need” a high chair, or again, we are Bad Parents. So, okay, that I can make. I can even make it in a way that I like, that makes sense.

A woman in my yoga class came up to visit the studio a couple of weeks ago, and said a lot of very nice things, and as she was leaving said that she had a furniture object that had been in her family for quite a while that I might like and she would bring it in. Apparently someone in her family had made it years ago, and many and many a cousin has used it, and the food stains and pencil marks bear out that story (not that I would doubt her).

Well, goodness. Did I ever like it. Her generosity with this family artifact has been a real gift, and has given me a great project.

Briefly, it is a high chair that has a built in rocking horse and desk. The photos below make more sense of this thing than I can with words. It is exactly the kind of thing that appeals to me: Concise, straightforward, and rife with opportunities to play with shape and form. It becomes several things, it has a variety of uses, and it is small enough to be stowed until the next user needs it.

I played around with the shape for quite a while. The lovely thing about being in the studio that I am in is that there are a lot of folk around who have great ideas and opinions. So we have been going back and forth about it for a couple of weeks now, and the prototyping process has maybe gotten a little out of hand, but it has been fun. Today I worked on the final touch, which was the identity of the rocker part. The original had a horse, which was a choice that made a lot of sense. But then, I have never been a horse person, particularly, so the idea of putting a horse silhouette in the piece did not particularly resonate with me.

The first candidate was a lion. It seemed like a good strong image, and one that resonates with so many memories from my childhood. The Chronicles of Narnia affected me so profoundly that I spent years checking every closet I passed in the hopes that the back would open up into another world. Never happened, but not for lack of trying. Though conceptually apropos, it turns out that it is tough to make a silhouette of a lion that does not look sort of like Albert Einstein. And I do not want to paint details on any of this, I want it (like the original) to be clean and without too much cutesy adornment.

The next shape that I tried was a mermaid. An homage to ship figureheads, as well as a reference to a tattoo I got a few years back, I thought it would be fun to have a rocking mermaid. It took a while for the idea that my son riding a mermaid might be pretty dirty to work it’s way through my thick skull. Oh. Right. Maybe he should not ride a mermaid…

Finally I have settled on a goat. Goats are fun and funny. They are kid-sized. They are easy to identify. I have many a memory of childhood petting zoos, of cautiously holding out handfuls of alfalfa pellets through wire fences at goats, fearful of their perfect little teeth and exhilarated when the gently picked the pellets out of my grubby little hand. I have a particular memory of being a little older, seven maybe, and being at the Nature Science Center with my mom and seeing a baby goat, only a couple of weeks old, gangly and timid, following its mother around with those clumsy steps particular to hooved infant animals. In retrospect, I think I identified with that baby goat because I felt so similar in school, clumsy and awkward, a feeling that would not evaporate for a long time. Goat it is.

I am going to make my “high-brid chairs” out of Baltic birch plywood, which is very white and clean. I think I am going to paint the edges blue and sand them back so that the plys show, acknowledging the material, but bringing some color into the piece. Clean and simple, with just a clear lacquer coat on top. I am not particularly keen on lacquer, it is pretty VOC-heavy, but it is good and hard, and will withstand years of the kind of hard use that babies can subject it to.

The prototype is almost finished as you can see. I am off to sunny Syracuse again tomorrow, but plan to start on the final versions next week when I am back. I am going to start with two, one for us and one for Karen’s sister and her husband, who are also having a baby. And we can hand them off to other siblings when our kids to big for them, and take them back when we have kids again, weaving these clever little furniture objects into the warp and weft of our families.