Zen and the Art of Making a Morris Chair: Awaken Your Creative Potential

“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” -- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays


“Zen and the Art of Making a Morris Chair” emerges as an homage to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” the 1970s nod to DIY and creative self-expression. The post industrial ennui of a 9 to 5 work day has morphed into a stuttering asynchronous work flow of data management and computing effort that creates no individually creative expression for most people’s lives. Contemporary humans don’t gain the personal satisfaction of physically making anything for themselves during their day. The chimeric work-life balance dangles like a carrot to entice.

An anecdotal survey of our lifestyles and homes reflect few inspired personal expressions of our birthright as creative humans. We eat bread that someone else baked, move to music that someone else made. We acquire framed art rendered by others to hang on walls painted by someone else. Creative visions are not explored, container gardens are not planted, songs are not sung.

We go to museums to marvel at tools and art that the ancients produced with their technology, while we, as descendants of these same people, question our ability to create similar visionary solutions for ourselves.

In “Zen and the Art of Making a Morris Chair,” Randy Gafner channels that visually iconic form of the Arts and Crafts Movement as a metaphor to encourage the reader to embark on their own personal creative project; to reclaim their innovative birthright. He shows how change, fear, acceptance, discernment and belief come forth to challenge and energize the creative seeker, of any competence, of any capacity. He draws these lessons from his successful effort to build a museum worthy Morris chair. In the yearlong process of making the chair, he gained personal lessons which he now shares with others through this book.

Gafner comes out of the Do It Yourself (DIY) and Maker Movement using his Morris Chair effort as a springboard for insight to encourage those trapped in lives devoid of personal creative expression. He feels that we all should be making the stuff in our lives that can reflect personal creativity and self-reliance. He believes that there is intrinsic value in putting head, heart and hand together in personal creative effort.