The Three-Legged Stool inEli's Workshop

In a small furniture shop outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a Mennonite craftsman named Eli Stoltzfus spent fifty-two years building Windsor chairs. Visitors to his workshop often noticed a battered three-legged stool beside his workbench — the first piece he ever made as an apprentice. Eli would tap each leg when explaining his craft to young woodworkers. "The first leg is study," he would say.…