Tracy Sigler — Chair of Log and Plywood

This is the first piece of furniture I ever made. I think I was about 20 years old, and it was a Christmas gift to my parents. I had found a large, rather straight log on their property and I knew I had to make something from it. At first I wanted to use it to make some sort modern totem pole, but that would require a lot of time and skill. I didn’t have much of either. I was determined to use that log though, and I was also looking forward to using a chainsaw for something other than yard work. So, I came up with this idea for a chair. I can’t remember why, but I wanted to design it to use knock down construction. (Probably due to years of Lego building.) I’m not sure if that made it easier or more difficult to build. There are some tricky miters for the various slots because the back and seat are not at a right angle, but for the most this is pretty primitive woodworking.

All the parts including: three log legs; plywood back, seat and arms; 2×4 cross braces.

Assembly is quick and easy.

One strange handmade chair ready for lounging.

Tracy Sigler — Steel and Aluminum Bridge Table

Happy Father’s Day! Here’s something I couldn’t have made without my father. I did the work on this table, but he taught me how to weld and use almost every type of tool there is. Moreover, he is a living example that you can build anything you want if you can just get started. This was built in his garage, using his welding gear, torch, grinding tools, etc. around 1990. I was also hogging up a lot of shop space with scrap metal and steel I had ordered. Thanks Dad, for being you.

The table top is aluminum plate. This is another piece that has a connection to Peter Pittman. For a while that I knew him Peter was doing design work for some metal fab shop. He offered to take me in the shop on the weekend and let me pick out some scrap. I found this large piece of aluminum behind a jumbo shear. It was surely usable for some job, but after hesitating for a second Peter said I could snag it. He’s cool like that. And nobody was around to notice.

So, this construction was made to the dimensions of that first piece of plate. The frame below it is mostly half inch steel rod, painstakingly welded together on a jig I had made. Then, even more painstakingly, and painfully, the welds were ground flush. Never again! The only pictures I have of it are from a gallery show, on a contact sheet a friend gave me. Thanks again Pam Taylor.

Another Father’s Day note: Our good friends the Pelczarskis now have this table. AND their second child, Tatum, was just born a few days ago! With an infant and a toddler in the house it’s a good thing I made that table baby-proof with only four sharp metal corners.

Tracy Sigler — End Table Prototypes

I made these sometime in the summer of 2005 using only a sharpened rock and some catgut. Or at least that’s what it felt like, and in some spots it almost looks like that. Really, the conditions were not ideal. No shop, working on the back patio, on a folding banquet table, with a small assortment of hand tools. They were really intended to be prototypes and I wanted to quickly whip them out. Like most things I’ve made, I wish I had taken a little more time.

They remind me of some early nightstands/end tables by my hero George Nakashima. Except that they are plywood instead of solid walnut, use hacky dowels instead of exquisite joinery, and have fat cylindrical legs instead of elegant tapered limbs. Other than that they are just like Nakashima’s work. The truth is they have more in common with Brutalism of the 1960s and ’70s, not necessarily a bad thing. Overall I like the way they turned out.

Rebar, Stainless Steel, Fan Chair

This one’s for you, Gary Taylor. Thanks again, for lunch.

I believe this is the first piece of metal furniture or sculpture I ever made. I made it when my brother and I had a record store in the late 1980s. We had a large space and a small inventory. So, occasionally we would have events like art shows or even spoken word gigs. That got me thinking I should make some stuff, in whatever medium. I ended up leaving some of my pieces in the store; this chair was one of them.

One of our regular customers, Peter Pittman, saw it and eventually displayed it in a hair salon, of all places, that his wife owned and operated. I think they would also have “exhibits” there. Anyhow, someone(?) saw it there and it ended up in a place called Breit Functional Crafts in Norfolk, VA, where someone else(?) saw it and it ended up in an exhibit at the Reynolds Minor Gallery in Richmond, VA. Funny enough, a woman from Virginia Beach saw it there and decided to buy it. I can’t remember the exact number, but I do remember I priced it high enough that no one, I thought, would buy it. Then the gallery doubled that number, and someone actually did! Oh well, I think it’s kinda corny now, but back then I hated to see it go.

The frame is made of rebar with most of the slag buffed off with a wire wheel. The seat and arms are 11 gauge stainless steel. The most interesting part, the back, is an ancient Dayton floor fan that we had laying around the store. It had a small frame that held it in position, and it took a few minutes to get up to speed. For some reason I thought it would obviously make a comfortable chair back. I meticulously cleaned it and even had the bullet-shaped motor housing re-chromed. The only pictures I have are from a contact sheet of shots a friend (Pam Taylor) took. She probably gave me the negatives but who knows where they are.

Thanks Peter! Wherever you are now…

Big Wheel Chair

I made this at least ten years ago, maybe 15. I had those four heavy duty casters laying around for a while just begging to be put on a piece of furniture. Each wheel is rated to hold 1500 lbs, and there are grease fittings on the axles and the caster bearings. I paid something like $5 each for them at a salvage store. New they cost a few hundred dollars each. I’m heavy duty, but these rollers are way heavy duty. The chair is of course silly, but still funny to me. Stainless steel 11 gauge seat and back, gun blued cold rolled half inch steel bar, and quarter inch steel plate make this rig quite heavy. At least it’s on wheels!