United Kingdom · Furniture making; Basketry; Orkney heritage
Orkney Chair — Straw-Back Tradition
The Orkney chair: a straw-backed chair, often hooded, that became the emblem of Orcadian domestic furniture. Its back is not woven on a loom or frame. Hand-twisted oat straw is laid in courses and bound in with thinner straw threads (bent or marram grass historically, cord today), then lashed to the uprights of a wooden frame. The form is recorded from at least the early 1700s and was standardized around 1890 by the Kirkwall joiner David M. Kirkness, whose rural home-workers made the backs as piecework.
Risk level: Endangered · Not listed; Orkney chair tradition on the Scottish national heritage inventory
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