The aim at this stage was to develop a prototype that was visually interesting and comfortable enough to sit my client in. This prototype should also look well in his dining room and, ultimately, would be a chair we could continue producing after the job was done. The soft wood prototype that we made was not a thing of enormous beauty, neither was it a thing of fine craftsmanship but it did do a jolly good job for us.

For this enabled us to put a chair together, sit in it, feel uncomfortable, take it apart again, re-work it, put it together, sit in it, feel uncomfortable in a different way, take it apart again and re-work it and so on. The point about the prototype is that it enabled us to try things out before the design got too hemmed in with jigs and other considerations.

If you are making a comfortable chair you are bound by certain conventions of seat height, seat width, back angle, lower back support, height of arms, the positioning of seat rails, even construction. There is very little leeway within a chair but a chair is fundamentally three dimensional. It isn't like a cabinet which is viewed from the front only. A chair should work singly and in groups, should be worked from the back, the front and the side, should be sat on and looked at, used and admired. I suppose I love chairs because they are the single piece of furniture that takes one closest to another human being and I like making furniture for people. Most of my furniture is domestic rather than corporate, for individuals rather can committees. I think "Ceres" is a good example of this process in action.

Having made the first prototype I took it with some trepidation to the client. Now at this stage the client has enormous power. He could have rejected entirely what we had done and sent us back or he could, as he did in this case, suggest modifications. The purist would recoil from this and would suggest that I prostituted my creative talents on the alter of commerce. Well, if that's the case so be it. We have got quite a few mortgages to pay down here. All that I can say is whenever my clients have made suggestions or made choices in 90% of those cases I do believe they have enhanced the design rather than compromised it. There is always the awkward person that shouldn't be a client anyway but I am afraid life is a bit like that.

So we came away from the initial meeting feeling that the prototype was half way there but still not quite right. We went back, chopped it about, put on better arms raised the height of the back very slightly and changed the upholstery of the seat. By this stage the prototype was looking rather sorry for itself as it had been well and truly fiddled with. But it did look more or less like a chair. This second prototype was then taken back to the client and left with him for a couple of weeks. Quite sensibly he wanted to see whether the chair was not only comfortable on immediate impact but after a couple of hours. When it passed this test, which it did, we were able to proceed to serious production.

At this stage Dave Woodward and I talked through the various options and came up with the plan of making a fine finished chair that would remain workshop property and in the process of making that chair we would then develop some if not all of the jigs necessary for making the batch. The American Walnut chair that you see in the coloured photograph is that chair.

Now I know in another article I have said something about jigs. Well this, I think, is a fine example of how jigs can be used very successfully. This chair is not a chair for industrial production. Although we now have the jigs that enable it to be made in small batches, it is essentially a craft workshop, hand made, hand finished chair. "Ceres" has not been designed down to a price, she is complicated and fiddly to make and I make no apologies for that.

I will not tell you how to make "Ceres" but I can point out some of the more interesting constructional problems that David Woodward had to overcome. The first is the crest rail, or top rail. This is curved in two directions and had to be laminated from bandsaw sawn veneer. The second problem David overcame was the jointing of that crest rail to the rear legs. The rail sits on the top of the legs and, as a consequence of this, the rear legs are each splayed out. This splay makes the fitting of lower back and seat rails more complicated but greatly adds to the look of the chair. We spent a considerable amount of time fiddling around with the design of the arms and the arm supports. What we have achieved now is a much simpler version of earlier prototypes. As a design progresses it is a good sign if it gets simpler rather than more complicated. The arms are fitted to the back legs in a simple dado routed across the back legs and secured with a plugged screw from the back. The seat frame is all mortice and tenoned with massive corner blocks for strength. The fitting of these blocks is an essential part of any good strong chair making. The lower leg supports are tenoned into the legs with a tenoned cross member. They say that if you make anything that is curved or off the right angle you should double the price. This is where a few curves can introduce mind blowing complexities of construction yet, once the pain barrier has been passed and the complexities understood, it then becomes a relatively straight forward if not easy making process. A chair such as "Ceres" will always be best produced in a workshop peopled by skilled and enthusiastic craftsmen for so much of the final fit and shape and finish is down to intelligent and sensitive craftsmanship.

"THE CRAFT OF CABINETMAKING"   ARTICLE 7

by David Savage

FIRST PUBLISHED "WOODWORKER MAGAZINE

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