Hedge chairs and ‘Autoprogettazione’

*Hedge chair from Co.Wexford, courtesy Aidan O’Sullivan*

In the early 1970s my mother brought home an Irish stripped pine kitchen dresser; I liked it very much. When I moved into a place of my own a year or two later, I visited ‘Rough Deal’, the shop in Dublin’s Temple Bar where it had been purchased, and which smelled delightfully of turpentine and beeswax, and there I bought some old pine pieces that I still own, including a table and chairs, a school-teacher’s upright desk, and a chest of drawers. In those days almost all Irish vernacular furniture was dipped into caustic soda or acid in order to get rid of thick layers of old paint; bare wood surfaces, waxed and polished, were then considered authentic and attractive. The opposite is true now. Recovered from rural cottages and farm sheds all over the country, much of this restored pine found its way to the United States, where, for both sentimental and aesthetic reasons, it was briefly fashionable. It is possible that the appeal of simple rustic furnishings at that time, especially in America, was related to the tastes and aspirations of the ‘counterculture’, which were illustrated in best-selling publications such as The Whole Earth Catalogue and Shelter. Originally intended for hippies and their fellow travellers, they were unexpectedly popular and influential.

An Irish rural cottage of the past was usually a single-storey structure with a thatched roof, a rectangular, narrow layout and a single room; its modest roof span was due to the scarcity of suitable long timber. Most houses of this kind did not have any foundations; their floors were finished in rammed earth, or covered with tiles or stone flags. Some were cold, damp, and poverty-stricken; others served their purpose efficiently and fitted the environment, often very attractively; they were usually sensitive to local conditions, taking advantage, for example, of shelter from predominant winds, and of resources such as streams, or groundwater running downhill, always making use of natural materials in appropriate and measured ways. This building tradition was longstanding and changed little, but because there are not many written descriptions of the homes of ordinary people before the beginning of the nineteenth century, only a few can confidently be ascribed dates before then. The same can be said of their contents and furnishings.

Irish vernacular furniture was normally made by the carpenters and joiners who supplied woodwork to homes, shops, and farms; nearly all of it was pine, but sometimes other timber, which might be found locally, or scavenged in woods or at the seaside, was used. Most was painted or scumbled. Among the more intriguing pieces were the primitive stools, known as ‘creepies’, the ‘sugán’ chairs, with seats made from rope of hay, straw or ryegrass, the ‘spindle-backs’ and other simplified versions of more fashionable designs, and especially those chairs that were constructed with naturally bent shapes to form legs, seats, and back uprights, made by travelling ‘hedge carpenters’ who gathered timber from hedgerows and woods. Many were particularly low, possibly so they could be used close to fires that were set on the ground in the single room, which may not have had a chimney. Often described as ‘hedge’ or ‘famine’ chairs, they frequently have legs that were roughly staked through the seats, with arms that were made in the same way, which made them easy to make and repair. The survivors are now widely collected, but although they are strikingly sculptural, they tend to be uncomfortable and comparatively fragile. Improvised and frugal, conceived and realised for a clear simple purpose, they are reflective of the lives of those who made and used them. As such, they can be surprisingly touching, although to some people, who recall stories of the harsh conditions and poverty their forebears experienced, they evoke uneasy memories.

Enzo Mari, the late Italian designer, would have understood the spirit of Irish hedge chairs. Desire for changes in society, and especially for the betterment of the lives of ordinary people, was at the heart of his practice. Deeply critical of the increasingly consumerist and commodified culture of the West, he believed that the job of the designer was to imagine new and radical ways of living and making, to put in place strategies and processes that would prioritise the basic needs of humanity, and to enable sustainable and empathetic modes of engagement with the world around us. In 1974 he began his most celebrated project, ‘Autoprogettazione’, or self-design, which he hoped would empower people to make furniture themselves. Mari developed a series of chairs, tables, beds and shelving units that could be constructed from pine planks with only a hammer and nails, promising that he would send the manual to anyone who wrote to him asking for it, and that he would only charge the cost of postage.

Autoprogettazione’s furniture was intended to spread good and inexpensive design among all who wanted it; Mari had scant regard for profit, fashion, marketing, or social prestige. He expressly encouraged collaborators to experiment freely with techniques and materials, and to introduce variations that might lead to interesting new developments. These ambitions, however, met with limited success in a culture dominated by consumerism. Mari later remarked that the spirit of the project had been understood by only a small minority of those who asked for the free designs; most people who wrote to him were looking for inexpensive ways of furnishing their homes or admired the furniture’s aesthetics. He was particularly upset by one American enthusiast who had commissioned other people to make the whole range of Autoprogettazione’s delightfully ‘rustic’ furniture for his chalet in Aspen, Colorado.

For further exploration:

A video about Lloyd Kahn, one of the authors of Shelter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKLG--xq3Gw

Some good drawings of traditional Irish houses: https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/building-of-the-month/traditional-houses-from-the-irish-folklife-architectural-drawing-collection/

Irish country furniture: https://www.museum.ie/en-IE/Museums/Decorative-Arts-History/Exhibitions/Irish-Country-Furniture

and: https://www.historyireland.com/irish-country-furniture-and-furnishings-1700-2000/

Enzo Mari exhibition review: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/mar/27/enzo-mari-review-design-museum

Autoprogettazione: https://socks-studio.com/2016/04/18/critical-understanding-through-practice-autoprogettazione-by-enzo-mari-1974/

Building instructions for Mari chair: https://vimeo.com/39624485

Current listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD4OmSXDnbE