The craft ethos of the mid 1960s to early ’70s was cultural light years before the Martha Stewart school of perfection. Macramé owls were in vogue, and anything from empty plastic bottles to tissue paper was considered a legitimate craft supply. The circular lids found at the end of cardboard frozen-concentrate juice containers, for example, turned out to be the perfect size for the seat bottoms of miniature tin chairs.
Asheville artist and jewelry maker Terry Taylor has a stunning collection of contemporary art, including prints, paintings and multimedia pieces. He has hundreds of handmade cups, many by local ceramic artists. And that doesn’t begin to touch his collection of vintage ephemera, including postcards and book illustrations, some of which he uses in his own multimedia assemblages. But the tiny furniture made from cast-off cans of pineapple, beer, soda, and sardines are a little piece of craft history he feels inexplicably drawn to collect.
“I like the scale of them. They’re sweet,” he says. “I’m intrigued that someone would make them.”
Taylor first noticed the chairs in the 1980s, long after their heyday was over. They started showing up in the flea markets, yard sales and antique stores he frequented. He began picking them up whenever he saw them, and later started seeking them out on eBay. The Victorian-inspired furniture, originally created for dollhouses or to be used as pincushions, wasn’t highly sought after at the time, and still isn’t a big-ticket item: A single chair might go for anywhere from $8 to $20 on eBay today, while groupings of larger, more elaborate pieces might fetch up to $35.
But Taylor doesn’t collect them as an investment. “I just like them,” he says.
Currently a student at Haywood Community College’s Professional Crafts program (concentrating in jewelry), Taylor is an appreciator of all things handmade, from the humble to the sublime. During his 15 years at Lark Books, where he was a craft designer and editor, he was often called upon to make sample projects, anything from altered books to beaded jewelry. While he worked with some of the best known fine-craft artists in the region, he was also drawn to the kitschy crafts of the period when miniature tin furniture evolved.
Taylor’s tin-chair collection includes about 60 pieces. “I don’t do things halfway,” he says. There are little tables made from herring tins, a big settee, garden seating, love seats, and rocking chairs that really rock. The seats are covered in materials ranging from inexpensive craft felt to velveteen and corduroy. There’s a set covered in the signature fabric of the era, leisure-suit polyester, and a table and chairs made from woven strips of Budweiser cans. Some of the pieces were meticulously painted with spray paint, while in others the writing on the cans shows through.
While many vintage crafts, such as macramé and needlepoint, have undergone revivals of late, tin-can-furniture making doesn’t seem to be riding the same retro-arts wave. Taylor has one of the few vintage craft publications still available that explains how to make them: a 1973 Hazel Pearson Crafts pamphlet titled Tin Can Doll Furniture: How To Create Beautiful Miniature Furniture From Cans Without Soldering. He picked it up at a yard sale for a quarter.
On the materials page are photos of different types of cans, ranging from vegetable juice to coffee, soup and pork-and-beans cans. “Tin Can Doll Furniture is an exciting craft that is sparking the interest of many ‘creative Americans,’ reads the book’s introduction. “Newspapers, magazines, and even television have given coverage to this fascinating hobby. Until now, too little instructional material has been written about it.”
The furniture-making process involves not much more than metal-cutting scissors, needle-nose pliers and curling shears. The tin is cut and curled into spiraling shapes, and in some cases the strips of tin are woven together. Yet despite the limitations of the craft, the anonymous creators of these tiny furnishings were able to achieve a great deal of variety, says Taylor. The scrollwork patterns and details are all unique and expressive, some loose and loopy, some small and tight or somewhat more modern in their appeal. They all have a certain delicacy about them that’s surprising considering the raw material from which they’re made (Spam cans not excluded).
Taylor says he’s never been tempted to make his own tiny tin furniture — however, he did display the collection in the window of Lark Books when he worked there. He’s content to preserve these sweet little pieces of American craft heritage whose time may be yet to come.