No 87. ORKNEY CHAIRS.

No 81. THE MANY USES OF STRAW.
In days of old straw was much used in Orkney for furniture, baskets, cassies for carrying peats or dung or grain, flackies to put over the backs of horses to pad them from the clibber, a wooden frame like a saddle from which a cassie could be carried either side. Flackies could also do service as rudimentary doors. No doubt Caithness had cassies too to carry grain to Staxigoe for shipping to Norway among other countries. As Aneas Bayne A.M. wrote about Caithness in 1734:-
The Trade of export of the Shire of Caithness consists mostly in Corns, wherof they export in any good year 16,000 Bolls at the Ports of Thurso, viz:- Scrabster Road, a small way West of the Town and at the River mouth, and at Staxigoe Harbour near the Town of Wick, half meal, half bear. They likewise transport a great deal of victuall to Strathnaver in Sutherland !! .
Without carts or roads in Caithness such grain was carried on the backs of the uniquitious pack horse. Lines of them tied head of one to tail of the horse in front were usual. Hence the meaning of the phrase nose to tail!!
For furniture straw was used for the now much sought after Orkney Chairs, but such chairs were pretty universal at one time. Mostly home-made by the men at the peat fire during the long dark winter nights.
At the Central School we were taught the rudiments of working straw, in my case a straw basket. The straw basket Nettie and I made in 1954 is still very functional on my visits to the superstores in Thurso. It is only 57 years old. We could and shoud be making. more use of our natural resources !!
An Orkney Chair was made as a wedding present for our grandfather David Pottinger, then of Upper Stove, Deerness, on his marriage to Elizabeth Tait of Campston on 19th August 1880. That event was the very first entry in William Tait’s Diaries. William was Elizabeth’s younger brother, aged 19 at the time. That chair is still at Greenland Mains with brother Hamish, as good as new, well, almost.

The very first entry in the Diaries begun in 1880 was:-
Aug 16 mon At Kirkwall with 5 sheep to G. Macgror. sold at £7.7.
Aug 17 tues At Lammas Market [ Kirkwall ] and bought a foal for £6.
Aug 18 wed At Cattle Show - preparing barn for wedding [ at Campston]
Aug 19 thur Elizabeth married this night - very fine night Aug 20 frid At Kirkwall with a cart with cussins from Caithness
Aug 21 sat At Kirkwall with three Carts with seats.

An Orkney Chair is a treasure much sought after, both at home and abroad. Usually a long waiting list of over a year to get one made. It is still a craft in Orkney with very expensive straw chairs yet being made by Robert H.Towers near Kirkwalll. His site is on the internet, well worth a look if only for educational purposes.

I mention him in passing because of his Stronsay connections. His grand father Tom Towers re-roofed the feeders’ byre at Whitehall with Welsh Slate for my father, working along with Tom Anderson, a mason, both knacky men. We watched them at work with admiration.
Gloy was the name used for oat straw when cleaned and ready for making baskets or chairs. To get the straw ready for making a chair or a basket a knocking stane was used in the barn. This was a flat flagstone built into the inside of the wall about 4 feet off the floor, projecting about six inches from the wall, and about two feet wide. We had one at Whitehall. It was called variously a knocking stane, a shakin stane, a gloy stane.
A handful of unthrashed straw from a sheaf of bright clean neepland oats was held tightly and the head end struck down on the stone, knocking off the grain and the chaff, a rough thrashing. The straw had to be kept as straight as possible. The leaves were then stripped from the stalk, the head end trimmed, and the resulting new-cleaned straw made up in tidy bundles was the gloy we used to make straw baskets at school. And by many a knacky man to make Orkney chairs.
And the same technique of clean straw is still used though I would think the old knocking stane is no longer in use.
I remember an Orkney Chair being made by Ould Pat Shearer, retired by my time from being one of our grandfather’s workers at Whitehall. He began with making the wooden frame of the chair in the farm workshop. A labour of love I think, but, as they say, he was “good wae his hands”. Worth watching the effortless way a skilled man did a job. And still is!!
There are tales in treeless Orkney of drift wood gathered from the beach being used to make a chair and I have no doubt it was so. I have seen a chair so made but it was not a straw backed one. They waste nothing across the Pentland!!
At school we had to hand make a special cord for the coming task of making a basket, made with imported raffia. We went down to the shore at Mill Bay to the sand dunes and gathered some specially hard Marram grass to add to the cord. Gave it a really hard wearing centre, good enough for 130 years in the case of our grandparents chair. Take some raffia, twist it right handed into a continuous double cord, cross it over left handed to make a self supporting two ply cord. Feed in a small amount of Marram as you go along for extra strength. Hard and strong and quite attractive, a skill on its own. Took some time and practice to get proficient at it, and we had to make most ot it at home.
When making the basket or the Orkney Chair the gloy was fed on the run in small but continuous amounts into the band being stitched. Your measure was just the amount that fitted confortably into your closed hand, the feel of it dictated when more was needed. .
The butt end of the straw was put into the centre of the band as we went along, leaving the finer and thinner upper ends of the straw to be seen from the outside, giving an attractive neat finish. The stitching was always done with a six inch sail maker’s needle, curved at the outer end, a big eye for the cord. We used a similar needle for stitching the wool bags.
The Orkney Chair could be simple but could be very sophisticated indeed. There are some for sale on the internet by a maker in Orkney and the range is azazing. The usual wood for the chair was clean-grained pine. Pitch Pine was also a beautiful wood for doors and shutters in older houses. Isauld House, now over 200 years old, had a good share once the paints and varnishes of long ago had been cleaned off to find the superb wood below.
Pine was much used for Orkney Chairs. Making one was a slow task, though the finished chair was a work of art. It was rare to come into any house in my early days in Stronsay and not find at least one if not more. The main enemy of Orkney chairs was woodworm, all too common in the moist climate of Orkney.
The range of chairs available from one maker uses Sapele wood from Africa as well as Pine. A very beautiful nice coloured fine grained wood, it adds about £50 to the price but when you are payng well over £1,000 for the more ornate chairs what’s £50.
Orkney Chairs ranged from the basic chair to ones with a drawer, usually front opening, but sometimes side so you could open it without getting off the chair. There was a granny chair that had a straw hood right over the top, very good to keep draughts off your neck!