By Ines Keane
The back of an Orkney chair is the best part, and the part you are most likely to walk past. It is straw. Oat straw, stitched into a curved, half-round back that rises to the sitter’s shoulders, and on some chairs continues into a hood to keep out the draught.
It looks like the sort of object that has always been there. It has a history, and the history has dates in it.
From stools to chairs
Nobody knows exactly where the Orkney chair began. Heritage Crafts, which classifies traditional crafts by how endangered they are, says the origins are unknown, and that the form evolved from simple stools into full chairs. One furniture history says the earliest versions were made wholly of straw, in the manner of a basket, and that from the 18th century a wooden frame with a straw back took over.
The materials came from what Orkney had. The frames were historically made from driftwood gathered on the shore. The backs came from oat straw, usually from black oats grown for livestock feed, harvested by scythe or binder. These were practical chairs for stone cottages. They gave warmth and draught protection, and some had a drawer under the seat.
A frame of about 26 pieces
Heritage Crafts counts around 26 separate wooden components in the frame, with mortise and tenon as the main joint. The straw back is stitched by hand using coiled basket-making techniques. Rows are tied to the chair’s uprights before the straw is folded back to start the next row.
One consequence, according to the same furniture history, is that the back is easy to replace. The wooden frames, it says, are very durable, while the straw can be renewed.
1890, and Edinburgh
Until the 1890s these chairs were made for families or for local sale. In 1890 that changed. The accounts differ on who took them to Edinburgh. One credits the Kirkwall joiner David Kirkness, who it says submitted two straw-backed chairs to the Scottish Home Industries Association display at the Fifth Scottish International Exhibition. Another credits Sheriff Thoms, who it says introduced them through the Association. What the accounts agree on is that Edinburgh brought the chairs to the attention of buyers. One says Liberty of London began ordering after that exhibition; another says Liberty sold them from 1909.
The Arts and Crafts movement was part of the story. Heritage Crafts says that interest from that movement turned the chairs into a commercial product from the 1890s.
David Kirkness and the four models
Kirkness, a joiner in Kirkwall, lived from 1855 to 1936, and he standardised the chair. He settled on four models: a hooded chair, a gentleman’s chair without a hood, a slightly smaller lady’s chair without a hood, and a child’s chair.
The numbers vary by source, so here are both. One furniture history says his workshop produced about 14,000 chairs between 1890 and 1936, and that annual production peaked above 400 in the early 1910s. A second history of the workshop gives the same total, and says it took a team of joiners and straw back-makers. A fellow joiner, Reynold Eunson, later took the workshop over; the sources differ on whether that was soon after Kirkness died or after the Second World War.
The chairs went a long way. They were shipped to the rest of Britain, India, Canada, America and Australia, and to naval vessels, according to the furniture history. The workshop’s history says Liberty sold more than 40 a month at the peak of demand, that King Edward VII owned a pair, and that the Queen Mother kept a hooded chair at the Castle of Mey. Something made by crofters out of necessity had become a luxury item.
Outworkers, and where to see one
A Kirkness chair in a Scottish university’s collection of artisan objects, dated about 1890, shows how the work was divided. The frame was built at his workshop on Palace Street in Kirkwall, with timber brought in from Aberdeen. The straw back was made by crofting outworkers, in this case Robert and Lizzie Foubister of Tankerness. The same record says Sir Robert Lorimer and his sister bought two chairs for Kellie Castle in Fife in 1893.
Examples are in public collections. An early low straw chair is on display at the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall, and a Kirkness hooded chair from about 1890 to 1900 is in the V&A, according to Design Exhibition Scotland. Check each museum’s opening hours before you go. Low early chairs, the same source suggests, may have helped sitters avoid the sooty air of a peat fire.
How a back is made
The straw is formed into rope-like bundles, and a metal ring regulates their thickness, according to Design Exhibition Scotland. The bundles are stitched with seagrass or sisal using sail needles, and the finished back is trimmed and singed with a blowtorch.
Who still makes them
Heritage Crafts classes Orkney chair making as endangered. When it assessed the craft, it estimated one to five people made a main income from it, with no trainees and ten to fifteen people making chairs as a leisure pursuit. We do not know the date of that assessment, and another source describes the craft as viable, so treat the numbers as indicative.
Makers named across these sources include Robert Towers, Scapa Crafts, Kevin Gauld and Fraser Anderson. Scapa Crafts says its team includes a master joiner, a straw back-maker and a specialist in cleaning the straw. Many makers now work beyond the traditional designs. In 2019 the London designer Gareth Neal worked with Kevin Gauld on the Brodgar chair, which combines an English Windsor chair frame with traditional Orkney straw work, and the V&A acquired the Brodgar Occasional Chair that year.
If you go
We have not confirmed which workshops accept visitors, or when. If you are planning a trip to Orkney with this in mind, contact a maker directly, or ask the islands’ visitor information. Ask to see how a back is stitched. Ask what the straw is, where it was grown and how it was cleaned.
Then sit in one, if you are allowed.
We follow places like this first and build shelves second. Roam first. Shop later.