York Corner
YORK VILLAGE - We ran into Robert Nichols at Hannaford's the other day and ended up chatting a bit outside, noting, all the while, the bemused smiles and stares he was drawing for his 18th-century costume - long-sleeved white blouse, dark, front-flap knee britches, white hose and black, slip-on shoes.
Robert enjoys a bit of local fame hereabouts as the seat weaver who plies his craft publicly (and in that costume) at Jefferds' Tavern in the Village every weekday in the summer - outside on the lawn there, under the shade trees, if the weather's fine, inside if it's not.
We caught up with him at the tavern later on in that same week, and he obliged us by filling us in on what was new in his life to date, and giving us a refresher course (since we'd interviewed him some years before) on how he'd evolved as a seat-weaver.
At Hannaford's, Robert had told us that, last year, from September of 2004 until January of 2005, he'd been through a dry spell: no seat-weaving orders.
At Jefferds' Tavern, he said he had no idea why that was - "something in the alignment of the planets, no doubt," he suggested, in a characteristically gentle manner - but the result was that, in his effort to find equivalent substitute work, he'd had to give up, for this year, another York job he'd had for three summers since 2003: management of the Old York Historical Society's gift shop.
"A lot of people see me here," he said to us at the tavern, "and think that I do seat-weaving only in the summer."
But he does it full-time, year-round, he stressed, so the order gap presented a real problem.
Fortunately, business is now back to normal, he reported, and, as we spoke, he wove the last strands of cord into a Danish modern chair, encouraging us to sit in it to test its softness, and permitting himself a soft little sigh of relief that that chair was the last in a set of five he'd completed.
In the process, he spoke to correct another popular misconception. He wears period costume, he said, to blend into Old York's historic setting, and to call attention to the fact that what he's practicing is a handcraft, but he isn't really merely a "period display." He uses modern tools, for example, and works on any and all seats, new and old and in-between.
Working regularly outside in such a public, high-traffic, spot, is, of course, fine advertising, from which Robert gets private clients and individual jobs. But he also gets steady work from longer-term relationships with outfits like Minuteman Furniture Workshop in Portsmouth, N.H., Randolph Upholstery on Route 236 in Eliot and a Worcester, Mass., upholsterer and furniture restoration firm.
Listen to Robert for any length of time, however, and you'll know he's not from these parts. There's just a trace of a southern accent there.
That's a clue to his origins in Union, South Carolina, where his grandfather introduced him to seat-weaving in 1975. The grandfather, a former mill worker then in his 90s, lived just across the street "and started me caning with a chair," Robert said. "He gave me the chair, a bunch of cane and an instructional booklet," he added, while the grandfather himself was doing reed work - perhaps, Robert speculated, because the grandfather no longer had the manual dexterity for the finer work. The completed chair became a gift to the family doctor.
Robert would turn that training, on his own, into a career, starting with two years' work in the mid-80s at a Cambridge, Mass., shop that did caning and rush and reed seating. In 1988, he branched out on his own as a seat-weaver, but he worked at other jobs, too: at Drumlin Farm, the Massachusetts Audubon Society's facility, and Codman Farm, both in Lincoln, Mass.; and as an elementary school custodian for four years while living in Northampton, Mass.
Commitment to fulltime seat-weaving hasn't proved boring, Robert said - far from it.
"I really like working for myself because of the diversity of it," he told us. "There are so many different sorts of weaving that I don't lose interest."
On top of that, there's that setting he works in at this time of year.
On the day we visited, a dozen or more youngsters had just been at Jefferds' Tavern to participate in a junior docents program, new this summer. Acting out the parts of York historical characters, they'd "livened up the place," Robert said - and they'd also made some old-fashioned gingerbread.
Robert, with the proper Southerner's respect for hospitality, apologized for not being able to offer some.
"I just ate the last piece," he said.
Last Saturday, we stopped in at the tavern again and met the lively Megan Anderson, from Detroit, Mich., one of this summer's four Elizabeth Perkins Fellows, who was taking her turn there tending shop.
Next week: her story, including her own tale about the stares she got while pumping gas in a dress from the 1870s.
