Season Two, Episode 11

How to bottom chairs? Bo knows!

Bo Jameson

I've been intrigued by old-timey chairs and rockers as long as I can remember. With a last name like Ford, it's only natural. Heck, my mom rocked me and my two siblings in a sewing rocker gifted her at the birth of my much older big brother!

Our local historian, Mike Gee, has written an excellent article on my great grandfather and the Ford Chair Factory he founded. You can find it at Mike's Facebook page, Columbia County Arkansas History and Genealogies. It's worth the time to stop and read. So when I was recently gifted a Ford rocker in excellent condition, I was intrigued by the business card I found stuck in the woven chair bottom.

The business card led me to Bo Jameson, a distant cousin himself who resides right here in Magnolia. Bo graciously consented to an interview. He shared with me how he became interested in putting new bottoms in old chairs. Our visit reminded me that we had met before, once at the Magnolia Blossom Festival a few years back and probably long, long ago when he worked with my dad, Melroy Ford, at the old Napa Auto Parts located back then on South Washington Street.

Bo gave me instructions to his house and noted that there was a speed limit sign hanging from a tree in his front yard. What he didn't tell me was that there was also an old chair sitting out by the curb waiting for trash pickup. It was a fitting indicator for a guy who works on chairs, but it didn't stay there long. While we talked, some fellow in a pickup truck stopped, examined the chair, and placed it in the back of his truck. Maybe he's a future chair expert in the making!

Bo and Mary graciously invited me in and their two dogs, Petey and Lulu, also made me feel right at home. Wait until you hear the story about Lulu, the little chihuahua they've just recently added to their family! I told them they should name the dog Tripod, but they already had a better name picked out!

The original Ford chairs were fitted with cowhide bottoms which were eventually replaced with other materials, such as Hong Kong grass from China or fiber made from bullrush plants here in the U.S.  The South Arkansas Heritage Museum features a number of Ford chairs. They recently added a beautiful child’s rocker with a cowhide bottom that shows what that early bottom looked like. Take a look here at their Facebook page.

Bo has experimented with different types of cord, which he explains in my interview. Some of the bottoms are pretty straight forward, while others incorporate unique designs such as horse heads, flowers and even an Arkansas Razorback.

Simply Unique selection of chairs

Bo is self-taught in the art of re-bottoming chairs, having learned it from a two-part article in a woodworking magazine. He's put bottoms in wood chairs as well as metal, and boasts that he can put a bottom in anything that has four cross-pieces to support it. He picked up so many aluminum and metal frame chairs to give new life that they began to set aside frames for him at the metal recycling yard!

He shared an intriguing legend he had heard about the meeting of Doc Ford and Henry Ford. Seems Henry came to visit Doc at the Ford Chair Factory and spent some time talking with him. Some time later a brand-new Ford car was delivered to the chair factory owner as a gift. 

I've never heard that story before, so if anyone can confirm or verify, please let me know! Henry Ford was known to give cars to friends, family members and employees as tokens of appreciation or goodwill. He once gave one to President Woodrow Wilson, so it could have happened! Meantime, I've written to the Henry Ford Museum to see if they know anything about it. Perhaps there is a Ford rocker sitting somewhere at the museum!

I referred one of the questions I am most frequently asked to Bo for clarification. How can you tell if an old wooden rocking chair is a Ford chair or not? There are a few tell-tale signs to look for, he told me:

1. A small groove or cove turned in to the top of the chair upright, leaving a rounded finial at the top of the chair. There are also a couple of indentations turned in to the two uprights between the top and bottom slats of the back. There are probably specific terms known by lathe operators, but that's the best I can do! 

2. A fine line turned in to the upright at the location of slats and rounds to indicate their location. The line will resemble a faint pencil line.

3. No screws or nails are used to hold the chair rounds or slats in to the upright pieces. The rounds were made of dried hickory and had a small bulb at the end similar to the tip of a drumstick. The dried rounds were driven into the uprights, which were turned from uncured or "wet" white bay lumber. When the bay dried around the hickory rounds, the chair could not be pulled out! The only hardware used in Ford rocking chairs are the screws holding the armrests to the uprights, carriage bolts attaching the rockers, and a couple of finishing nails driven in to the uprights to secure the armrests.

In the small shop he has to the side of his home, Bo showed me five or six chairs he is currently working on. He doesn't take in as many chairs as he once did, but he is still open to receiving a few. It takes him about two days of labor to complete one chair, so it is somewhat a labor of love. Watching him demonstrate how the weaving is done, there is an element of knitting that keeps the string in place. Most days now he uses macrame string that is more readily available than grass from China! 

Some of his finished products are on sale at Simply Unique at 110 North Washington in Magnolia.  That includes the shiny black beauty he is shown working on in the photo above, which he delivered this week. Of course I had to drop by the store on Tuesday morning to take a look and snap a few photos. I enjoyed the warm welcome I received and thought what a good place the store would be to open up my own booth!

At one time most rural homes featured large front porches, and they were traditionally equipped with wooden chairs or rockers. I remember sitting with my grandfather, Adley Ford, on his front porch in the Macedonia community. Whenever a car sped by in front of his place on Arkansas Highway 160 he would lean forward, shouting out, "Get on down that road!" And then he would go back to rocking in his well-worn Ford rocker.

Ron Ford, Louise Hendricks, Bo Jameson

We have lots of family memories centered around Ford chairs and chair bottoms. My brother and sister and their spouses would come in for the Blossom Festival and it was a perfect family reunion. We once ran into Bo a few years back when he was still showing chair bottoms at the festival. Who should walk up but our first cousin, the late Louise Nipper Hendricks, herself a Macedonia girl who knew much about the chairs and their history. Nothing would do but to snap a photo. 

If you wonder how to put a new bottom in an old chair, Bo knows. Click the link below to hear my interview! And you can contact Bo by phone at 870-234-2165 or by email at bodiddle@suddenlink.net.