Make a Chair from a Tree, 3rd Edition, Jennie Alexander (book)

In 2014, Jennie Alexander somewhat reluctantly agreed to a third edition of her seminal 1978 book on green woodworking, Make a Chair From a Tree, a book that launched the careers of thousands of woodworkers and helped ignite a green woodworking movement in the United States. She had learned so much since the first two editions that this is an almost entirely new book.

The third edition is the culmination of a lifetime's work on post-and-rung chairs, covering in detail every step of the green-wood chairmaking process: from splitting and riving parts to making graceful cuts with a drawknife and spokeshave, to brace-and-bit boring for the solid joinery, to hickory-bark seat weaving.

With the help of Larry Barrett, one of her devoted students, she worked on the book until just weeks before her death in 2018. Barrett polished the final manuscript, then built a chair in Jennie's shop using her techniques and tools while many of the photographs were taken. Nathaniel Krause wove the hickory seat, and longtime friend and collaborator Peter Follansbee helped edit the text into words that are intensely technical but easy to understand.

184 pages in full color, 9" square (the original trim size of the 1978 edition), hardback with sewn signatures reinforced with fiber tape, printed on acid-free paper in the United States. Published by Lost Art Press.