Chair no. 1 – Design

I’ve been doing woodworking now more or less since 2003 when I went to lutherie school. Since that time I’ve had the opportunity to work on some pretty complex woodworking projects. Everything from guitars, large carved sculptures, and all sorts of elaborate joinery for furniture and carpentry. But one thing I’ve never made is a proper chair. Chairs are daunting to design and build. They are full of joinery with compound angles and often times no surface is flat, rather the whole thing becomes a blend of merging and flowing curves. They are essentially sculpture. Yes, chairs can be made incredibly simply, but in my opinion the best chairs both visually and ergonomically are full of all the things that make them daunting to build; curves and angles.

All that is to say that until now I more or less put chairs off as something I wasn’t going to bother with. Lots of furniture makers specialize in chairs, but I’ve always been more comfortable in boxy cabinet territory. There’s something much more concrete about working with flat planes and building off a rectangular grid. But I’ve also always had an itch to build a chair, and have made a couple of false starts. Then partly as a result of my playing around and learning Blender for 3d modeling I started to design some chairs. Once I made a few designs I decided, enough is enough. It’s time to actually build one.

My initial designs were very simple, and somewhat limited by my fledgling abilities using the modeling software. But little by little I’ve been learning how to form different shapes and curves and design possibilities have started to open up. So what follows is a brief look at some of the chair designs I’ve been working through, concluding with the final design that I have decided to build. I should say none of these designs are necessarily complete. Rather as I made one design, I considered what I did and didn’t like about it and moved on to the next. So in that way each chair is really a work in process.

Chair no. 1.1

This was my first chair designed in Blender, and it’s pretty simple overall. I was trying to design it such that it would be easy to build with minimal curvature to the various parts. In this case the arms and back legs are curved a touch, as well as the back rest which I envisioned scooping out with carving tools. One thing I really like about this design is the arms and their connection to the front legs. When I designed this I wasn’t really looking at other chair designs very much, and really just drew the chair on the fly. I think that’s partly why I drew the legs and arms this way; with the arms joining into the front legs. It’s a detail I’ve never really seen on any other chair design, and I like that aspect of it. There’s something very tactile to the legs sticking up the way they do. The arms might be too narrow for comfort but at the same time I really like their slenderness.

Chair no. 1.2

For this version the main structure (legs, seat stretchers, and back) stayed the same, but I changed the seat from a leather seat to wood and changed the shape and joinery of the arms. After designing the first chair I started to look at other chair designs a lot more closely. I also started to read more about chair ergonomics, wanting the design to be comfortable for actual sitting. A detail that I was concerned would be uncomfortable in the first design was the arm rests. I worried that if they were too narrow they wouldn’t support a persons arms and may be uncomfortable. So I widened them, which had the result of requiring a redesign of the joinery between the arms and the front legs. A friend of mine told me this chair reminds him of chairs from his school as a kid. I like that comment. There is something sort of sweet and simple about these first two chair designs.

Chair no. 1.3

This time I wanted to try a different approach with the back support, and see if I could find a slightly more elegant design. I started thinking about some chairs that I picked up off the street when we lived in NY. The chairs were beat up with broken loose joints, and the original rush seats were falling apart. So I fixed them up and used Danish cord to reweave the seats. These chairs were really comfortable, yet simple in their design. So I started to borrow a few design details from these chairs. Namely the back support design.

I also felt like the flat arms in the second design seemed kind of clunky, but I really like the simplicity of the round arms in the first design. So I brought back the round arms, and made them wider so the legs could join from below.

Chair no. 1.4 and 1.5

The first major change to these two versions are the additional set of stretchers and the change in the seat from a wood plank to woven seat. Those details also came about after thinking about the chairs from NY pictured above. The woven seat is not pictured but the seat rails have been made thinner and rounded a bit to accommodate a rush seat. With those parts becoming thinner I wondered if I would be necessary to add additional strength to the overall frame. So I added in the set of lower rails below for additional racking resistance. Finally the back underwent quite a change. I wanted to try something different from the oval shape back on the chairs above, and thought maybe a more streamlined rectangular back with some gentle curvature might be nice. The arms on these chairs also underwent a bit of a transformation. I like the round shape of the chair above, but wondered if it would be more comfortable if the top side where you actually rest your arm was more flat. So I made the arms more of a half-round shape.

Chair no. 1.6

This is where things really start to take a strong turn. In all the chairs above something about the arms and backs seemed too conventional. So I started to look at chair designs that merged the arms and back into one piece. There are a ton of famous examples of chairs done in this style, and perhaps the best example are the classical Ming Dynasty Chinese chairs that have a continuous arm/back.

These chairs are what inspired Hans Wegner’s famous wishbone chair.

I looked at a lot of images of both Wegner’s chairs and the Mind Dynasty chairs above, and I am really drawn in by the unified arm/back rest. The flow of the shape is incredibly pleasing. I will fully admit that I have never sat in a Wegner chair nor one of the Chinese chairs, so I have no idea what kind of comfort they offer. Thought I suspect the Ming Dynasty chair is probably not all that comfortable for long periods. For one the seat is more or less flat, with no tilt towards the back of the chair. I’ve sat in flat chairs in the past and usually find myself ready to stand up pretty quickly. Even just a little bit of tilt tends to make chairs more comfortable. I have read that these chairs may have been paired with a cushion, so I imagine that may have added a great deal of comfort.

The other detail that confounds me a bit is the angle of the arm rest. On both the Ming Dynasty chair and the Wegner wishbone chair, the angle is quite strong, in a downward slope. The back is high, presumably to give the sitter’s back good support, but the arm rests look too high to be comfortable near the elbow. Though again without having a chance to sit in one of these chairs I’m largely guessing. (sneak peak – as of writing this I have already started the fabrication of my chair using this style, and can confirm it’s very much useable and comfortable. )

In any case I like this unified style of arm and back rest, and decided to give it a shot on my chair design. Here’s my first attempt. The form is fairly simple and maintains the round shape that I was drawn to in my initial designs. I brought the angle of the arms/back down compared to the Ming Dynasty chair too. So far this is my favorite chair of this group of designs. And it’s the design I’ve decided to move forward with for fabrication, which has already started.

Chair no. 1.7

I have just one final design to talk about. While I more or less made up my mind to proceed with the unified arm/back style, I decided to see how the chair would look if the arms/back were flat instead of angled. I figured if the angled design is not so conducive to a comfortable arm rest maybe this design would be. The downside is now the back support is lower, which may make it less comfortable for more reclined sitting. But as a dining chair or even a desk chair I think it might work. Once again I also flattened the arm rests.

So my plan was to proceed with fabricating chair version 1.6, and in the event that the arms/back felt uncomfortable, I would cut down the back legs and flatten it out.

In the next post I’ll post some photos from fabrication. The chair is actually nearly complete. Just the other day I finally assembled it and today I plan to apply a coat of oil, followed by seat weaving once the oil is dry. Stay tuned for more chair work next week, and thanks for reading.

-Jon