Dining Chair

I wanted to make a chair and was inspired by the Scandinavian modernist look. I'd been looking at tubular metal designs and wanted to see if I could translate those into wood. At this point, I hadn't seen Alvar Aalto's 1933 Chair, which also took the same point of inspiration, but it's impossible to deny that we both reached a similar solution!

The seat and back component laminates being glued in the former

I really wanted to explore curves and had just completed a small project in laminating, which I found fascinating. I was keen to apply this technique to an entire chair. This method of making was of interest because it could also lend itself to a batch-making process. This would make it more feasible for making matched sets relatively quickly because the moulding only needs making once.

The raw components before being dimensioned on display with my sketchbook

Starting from scratch, including the making of the two formers to the finished product, took me five weeks. This would be considerably quicker now the formers are made and I have the experience of making the first chair.

The components after being dimensioned, ready for assembly

The beech wood version in this prototype is based on a school dining type chair finish. It would be possible to build these chairs using more decorative veneer patterns to suit different aesthetics. From this perspective, it's a blank canvas with many possibilities.

The completed chair after the final glue up, before wax oil finish