CRAFTWORK: 'There's a chair inside everyone,' says Alison Ospina, a woodwork teacher based in Skibbereen. Kusi Okamura visited her workshop, and came away with a seat she had made herself and a Black & Decker fixation
I have always loved making things. As a kid I made ornaments out of egg cartons, glitter and pipe cleaners. As a teenager I made and, unbelievably, sold clay jewellery in the shape of body parts, and over the years I have adapted, and ruined, many a piece of clothing. The practicality of any of it was questionable, so when a friend recommended a chair-making course in Skibbereen, I jumped at the chance to make something useful for a change.
Alison Ospina, who runs the course, lives just outside the town in the aptly-named Wooden House. Originally from Cambridge, Ospina came to Ireland with her husband and three children more than nine years ago in search of a slice of the good life. Along the way, they also picked up four dogs - Buffy, Hero, Piglet and the Big Yellow Dog - and a goat called Lulu, nicknamed The Evil One because of her penchant for butting.
Ospina left a career in psychiatric nursing to teach woodwork, but only started making green wood chairs when she came to Ireland. The term green wood refers to freshly-cut wood that hasn't been dried, as usually recommended in woodwork. It was almost by accident that she discovered that it was not only possible, but also pleasurable, to use green wood. "I was just too excited to wait any longer for the wood to dry," she told me, "and since then, there has been no looking back."
Enthusiasm has made Alison a great teacher, and throughout the course, her love for the chair-making process was obvious.
My first day began with a trip to the Coillte wood in Clash na Crana, where Ospina harvests a regular stock of hazel. As an environmentalist, she told me, it was important to her that she used wood taken from a coppice. This way, cutting down the trees was good woodland management, rather than a destructive activity. She works with hazel because its long, straight branches and attractive shiny bark make it ideal for furniture - and because of the mystical properties assigned to it.
As we took out our saws, Ospina told me how she had developed a hunter's eye for the perfect hazel branch, and joked how she could actually see "the wood for the trees". With a bit of practice, I also started to spot potential chair parts on every tree.
After sawing our choice cuts of wood, we headed back to the workshop beside her house. An eco-friendly building, the workshop was funded by a local development programme and has sheep's wool insulation and a grass turf roof. Inside, the tools of her trade lined the walls, with one wall dedicated to a gallery of past pupils, each with their own different chair. Seeing the end result is, Ospina said, one of the joys of her job. "I really believe that, as with novels, there is a chair inside everyone."
Ospina has made and designed more than 120 chairs. Many of them, like her nursing mother's chair or farmer's chair, were custom-designed to a specific request. "What I like most, is finding out about the person," she said, "and then matching the chair to the person."
As we settled in, I realised I had to decide what kind of chair was inside me. Ospina suggested I go with whatever pieces of wood I liked best, and work from there. Picking out my hazel, I quickly began to have a clear image of the chair I wanted to make, one with a high back, arms to rest on, and short legs for my short legs.
I set about preparing the wood, first stripping off the bark, then making the pegs, and finally whittling the ends. Ospina guided me through the whole process. I used the hand drill to make holes for the pegs, and the chair quickly started to take shape. It was particularly memorable when the drill burnt into the sappy wood, giving out a whirl of smoke and the smell of roasted hazelnuts.
The whole process took up most of the first day, and we broke briefly for a quick lunch of salad, cold meat, locally-made cheeses and bread. By the end of the day, I had assembled the back and front of my chair, using glue and clamps to keep it in place overnight. I found it hard to leave my half-made chair alone in the workshop, and that night I dreamed about peeling satisfyingly long strips of rough bark away from smooth wood.
Next morning, we started early. The front and back had dried, and with all the pieces ready, it was just a matter of gluing and screwing-in. It was great fun using the power tools, and since then I have developed a bit of a Black & Decker fixation. Ospina told me that she often felt her role on the course was that of midwife, and when I finally screwed the elm seat component in place, I understood what she meant. The joy of seeing my design come together made me surprisingly emotional, and some people cry at the sight of their finished chairs.
For me, it was love at first sight, and it was an agonising week later before Ospina's husband, José, kindly brought it up to Dublin. Because I wasn't able to stay the third day to finish it in Cork, I sanded it down and gave it a polish at home, using natural beeswax. It is now in my study, and it is still a thrill to use it, because of the fact that I made every useful bit of it.