Montross chair-maker staying busy to supply props for 'John Adams'

By FRANK DELANO

Date published: 8/19/2005

William D. Jenkins is scurrying to build a few Windsor chairs. The past of the nation depends upon them.

"I need 35 sack-backs by Jan. 1 for the Continental Congress. I've called all my customers and asked them if they'd like their chairs to be in the 'John Adams' movie," Jenkins said.

With loaners from his customers and other chair-makers, plus others from every room of his old family home at Montross, Jenkins is up to about two dozen.

Not to worry. He says he's got plenty of time to build about a dozen more before the Founding Fathers solemnly rise from them to sign the Declaration of Independence.

On the other hand, he's facing a Nov. 1 deadline to finish up other chairs and benches commissioned by the movie's makers, including replicas of John Adams' favorite hoop-back Windsor and Thomas Jefferson's swivel chair.

Filming of "John Adams" was scheduled to start next month in Richmond and Williamsburg. But delays in finding an actor to play the title role have reportedly pushed filming back to February.

Playtone, a California film company partly owned by actor Tom Hanks, is producing the 11-part HBO miniseries based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography.

The Virginia Film Office expects the production to sprinkle $60 million around the state before the filming ends next spring.

Five or six thousand of those dollars will fall Jenkins' way, he said. It's the biggest order yet for the 64-year-old retired airline pilot who started making the classic chairs in 2002.

Sturdy, light and comfortable, the design first appeared in the English town of Windsor in the early 18th century. Windsor Castle royalty made the chairs popular, Jenkins said.

A royal governor brought some to Pennsylvania. American craftsmen soon stripped the design of European pretension and started turning them out by the thousands all over the Colonies.

Regional craftsmen developed different styles. Jenkins makes and sells many of them: Philadelphia low-backs, New York bow-backs and Boston and Nantucket fan-backs, plus comb-backs, continuous-arms and sack-backs--so named because feed bags were often draped over the curved open back in cold weather.

Jenkins said his fascination with old tools and a prompt from his wife Lucylin put him in the chair business

Date published: 8/19/2005