Master Craftsman Greg Harkins, who has been making rocking chairs by hand for 50 years, hopes his art doesn’t vanish after he passes.
Virtually no one does it anymore.
“Not enough people are doing it. I can’t find anybody,” Harkins, 73, said recently at his woodshop in Canton.
“I’m always looking for another Hodges,” Harkins said, referring to his 24-year-old apprentice, Hodges Boland.
Boland, a family friend originally from Jackson who grew up in Michigan before moving back to Mississippi, started to work with Harkins four years ago.
Boland built and sold his first rocking chair a year and half ago.
Boland said he learned the rocking chair process from Harkins, plus a whole lot more.
“I’ve learned all kinds of random stuff from Greg. What I love about the chairmaking process is the meeting of practicality and art,” Boland said.
Still, Harkins is always on the lookout for “another Hodges.”
“Nobody really understands what I do,” Harkins said.
Sometimes I was working 18-hour days. No way I could have done that without my work ethic. It was in my blood. You also must love it.
He’s always hoping to change that, either through 5-day classes he teaches to willing participants or just maybe through the sale of his chairs to the public.
Harkins, a Mississippi native originally from Jackson, is world famous for his rocking chairs.
He has made and sold his chairs to residents of more than 35 countries and sold “multiple chairs to people in every state in the union,” he said.
He’s made chairs for five former presidents — Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush — and President Donald Trump. He also made a chair for Pope John Paul II.
He signs and dates each chair, which run in price from $1,500 to $3,500. He makes his chairs with oak, walnut, and bodock wood, which is yellow and slowly transforms over the years into a mahogany-type color.
Harkins picks out the trees, has them cut down, peels the bark off the hickory logs, uses a sawmill to cut them, whittles them down, builds the frame, hand weaves the backs and bottoms with the cut tree bark, builds the arms and rocker, puts pegs in, sands them, assembles them, and then creates the finish.
Today, he can build one to two chairs a week. When he was younger and had more help, he made about 15 a week.
Like Boland learning the craft from Harkins, Harkins was an apprentice to Mississippi woodworker Tom Bell. Bell, based in Thomastown in Leake County, worked with Harkins for about a year and half in the early 1980s following Harkins’ time at Mississippi State where he earned a degree in psychology.
“I didn’t make much money back then, about $30 a week. He would fill my tank up,” Harkins said.
Harkins said Tom’s wife, Mabel Bell, kept him fed in those days, with both food and good stories.
Although he worked with seven different woodworkers when he was younger, Harkins said Bell was the teacher who pulled everything together for him in the end.
“Each man had a different slant on it (woodworking), but the common thread was chairs. And Tommy Bell was fantastic,” Harkins said. He also said the other craftsmen he worked with all though Bell was the best around.
Harkins said making rocking chairs by hand is hard work, and he couldn’t do it without the work ethic passed down to him from his father and grandfather.
“Sometimes I was working 18-hour days. No way I could have done that without my work ethic. It was in my blood. You also must love it,” Harkins said.
Harkins, who called himself “sentimental and tender,” has fond memories of all his grandparents, including his paternal grandmother, Thelma Harkins, who he called “Nanny.”
Harkins has a walnut rocking chair given to him by Thelma Harkins, a chair that is 125 years old and has been used by seven generations of his family.
“You can look at the chair and see that there’s not an error in it.”
Harkins said he spent a lot of time at Thelma Harkins’ farm in Leake County when he was young.
“We would be in her chicken yard and sitting on the tree stump where that chair was made. And she would just tell me these wonderful stories again and again,” Harkins said.
Harkins’ national reputation as a chair maker is “staggering,” he said. But it’s hard for him to see himself in that light.
“I’m not anybody but me. I’m not Superman. I’m just me,” he said.
Harkins said he seems to sell more chairs to people outside of his home state.
Harkins said he was once at a crafts show in Dallas when a man came up to him, complimented him on his chairs, and said he wanted to buy four of them.
“The man told me, ‘We have nice chairs in Mississippi, but nothing like this.’ I asked him if he was from Mississippi. He said he was from Durant. I told him I lived in Vaughn. He was shocked,” Harkins said laughing.
Although his home and shop were based in Vaughn for years, he now owns about 80 acres in Canton, where he lives and works today.
Harkins is a fan of birds.
The space between his house and woodshop is spotted by cages with multi-colored Chinese pheasants, as well as chickens, pigeons, and other kinds of birds.
“Aren’t they beautiful,” Harkins said looking at one of the Chinese pheasants.
Harkins said he plans to use a former Catholic church on his property to open a school — the St. Anne’s School of Arts and Crafts.
The church was built by the Harkins family as a log church and rebuilt as a brick church before it was dedicated to the Catholic Church.
As for Boland, Harkins will be leaving his materials and tools to his apprentice.
“Hodges is a dream come true. Tom Bell was frantic to find someone to carry on his legacy, and now I understand why,” Harkins said.
“I would like to leave him with about 100 orders. That will give him work for a long time.”
Having said that, Harkins isn’t planning on retiring exactly.
“I should have stopped a couple of years ago. But I have such a love for this. I will keep on building these chairs until I die.”
For more information about Harkins, his chairs, or classes, visit harkinschairs.com or call 601-201-1480.
