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production. He cuts the trees, mills the lumber, turns all parts by hand — albeit on an electric lathe in an air-conditioned shop on his property — and assembles chairs and other furniture using shrink-fitting techniques passed down through centuries. Each piece is hand finished, dated, and signed and the result is extremely durable furniture of heirloom quality. Harkins is only now receiving requests for repairs on some chairs that he built four decades ago. Like Bell before him, Harkins hand-picks trees for lumber to make his chair parts. “About two-thirds of my chairs come from walnut or bodock (Osage orange) trees, but oak and hickory are popular, too,” says Harkins. Each chair takes approximately 25 hours to make, and a good-sized tree can yield up to eight chairs. The backs and bottoms of the chairs are woven by hand using either cane or hickory bark. “I’m influenced by the old ways my great-grandparents used,” Harkins says. “My grandmother was a guiding light in my life. People back then had a vast amount of knowledge and they built things to last. That’s my way, too.” In the early days, Harkins was making upward of 1,700 chairs a year, but they were selling for less than $100. Now he makes about 150 chairs a year but they sell for $1,000 and up; a nice bodock rocker is about $3,000. “In the early 1980s, Southern Living ran one small column with a picture of me working,” he remembers. “That article brought me $150,000 worth of business. But I was selling my chairs back then for only about $90. Can you imagine how many chairs I had to make that year? It was astronomical.” The popularity of his furniture endures, as Harkins was featured in a 2020 episode of HGTV’s “Home Town” (Season 4: “There’s Just Something About a Porch”), where Harkins and show host Ben Napier built a bench for the wraparound front porch of a home in the country near Laurel, Miss. Also impressive is Harkins’ client list, which includes celebrities and U.S. presidents including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. “Pope John Paul II also had one of my chairs, and I made chairs for Obama and Trump, although they were never picked up,” he says. Although his staple is a standard rocking chair, Harkins also makes straight-back chairs, nursing rockers with one short arm (also called “guitar rockers”), double rockers, and rockers with bassinets attached. He also makes tables, beds, and chests of drawers. Each piece is unique and will last a lifetime — maybe longer. “If you make it right, you can’t tear it up, even if you tried,” Harkins says with a laugh. In 2021, Harkins began to pass along his knowledge to Lance Felton. “I met Greg when I was 14 years old,” says Felton, who comes to the shop every day to build chairs and learn about woodworking. “Then, over 40 years later, I ran into him again, but I never dreamed I’d become his apprentice.” Felton is learning all aspects of the craft, including the art of making solid furniture without nails or glue. “Greg told me that the chair tells you how to put it together, if you just listen to it,” Felton says. He is also writing down the knowledge so it won’t be lost. In the end, it all comes down to simple ideas, says Harkins: to pass along the knowledge to the next generation and to take no shortcuts. “As Tom Bell once told me, ‘Build the best chair you can build, and you’ll never run out of customers,’” he says.

HarkinsChairs.com

Michele D. Baker is a freelance travel writer and blues music lover in Jackson, Miss. She also loves cats, books, and sitting in her grandmother’s rocking chair. Visit her at www.MicheleDBaker.com.