In the back of Mara Klein's workshop, finished chairs wait beside a drawer of spare stretchers, woven seats, and wooden pins. The parts are not leftovers. Each belongs to a repair the workshop expects to make ten or twenty years from now.
Klein designs for the second owner as carefully as the first. That changes the joint, the finish, the instructions under the seat, and the promise attached to the sale.
Pinned mortise-and-tenon joints can be opened by a repairer without cutting away sound timber.
Soap and oil finishes accept a local repair. A scratch becomes maintenance, not a reason to strip the chair.
A mark beneath the seat records the timber, year, finish, and dimensions of replaceable pieces.
Drawings, jigs, and spare timber remain in the workshop so a future maker can repeat the repair.
Repairability adds work before it saves material. The workshop keeps drawings, labels batches of timber, stores jigs, and trains every new maker to reproduce old parts. None of this is visible in the showroom price tag.
Klein treats that archive as part of the chair. Without it, a replaceable stretcher is only a good intention.
Read the remaining stories on objects, tools, and public places made for a longer useful life.