Sunday, November 17, 2013

Baidarka Chair


What do you do with an old baidarka (kayak) once it starts falling apart?  Why you make a chair out of it.
I don't know the details behind this picture other than that it came to me from people living in or once living in the Aleutians. I won't mention their names just in case they would rather not be named. On the other hand, if they feel like they would like to be named, I would be glad to name them.
The question here is whether making a chair out of a baidarka is considered creative re-use or an act of vandalism, or worse yet, sacrilegious destruction of a valuable cultural artifact.  Who knows.  Probably the kayak was falling apart and someone did some creative re-use.
Regardless of what is going on here, let's try to identify some baidarka parts that might have gone into this chair. The skinny rods that form the back look like hull stringers.  The larger upright pieces of wood that form the sides of the back look like sections of the stern parts of gunwales.  The rest of the pieces are hard to identify other than that they might be deck beams.  And the seat looks like a piece of kayak skin. 
Rock on.

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