Decorative Chair

[myxpykalix]

roughing pass 4 hours finishing pass 8 or 9 hours. No sanding at all. Used Centuriontools bits. I highly recommend them.


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[butch]

Jack
That is fantastic.
Thanks for posting.
Butch

[fleinbach]

Jack

A fantastic job, I realy like the carved back rest. No offence but it looks like it would be a bit uncomfortable to rest your back against. How does it feel to sit in.

[myxpykalix]

Frank,
Thats why i named it "Decorative" chair not "comfortable" chair..lol. I just made this to see if i could and if i were making these to set around a table the carved side would be better reversed but that side looked flat and plain and made the piece look unfinished. So since this is going to sit in the coner and just look pretty I may leave it like this. As you see it nothing is glued or finished so i could turn it around.

[fleinbach]

Jack,


If I where making a set that was usable I would turn the decoration around and on the side where you would sit I would upholster a decorative panel. One with the decororative tacks used heavaly years ago.

[henrik_o]

Jack,

Great work, that back is quite a masterpiece.

If you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism, and I'm really not one to speak, you have a problem with proportions going on here. The base of your chair is beautiful. The back is also good, I'll say outright that this is not my cup of tea, but I appreciate the ornamentation. However, the very dense 'slab' of a back, with so much going on, meeting the also quite detailed base by the means of a very plain seat and almost no (or actually no) curvature, well, it tends to throw it all off balance. In my eyes, that is.

If you added some elements to even out the basic proportions I think it would do a lot for the whole 'geist' of your chair. One way to do this would be to add a sloped sarg (not sure of English term, it's the sideboard that usually connects the legs just under the seat, or the tabletop on a table) that works with the center of gravity being very much towards the back on your chair.

What is important is that it works for you, and if you like it anything I say is irrelevant, but one trick I part learned from master carpenters and part worked out myself is a very basic one: how do you look at furniture? It's not so much about what to look for, the trendy designers have filled volumes of literature ruminating about that, but rather how you look.

How do you look at a chair? Well, you look at it from the front, then from the side, at an angle from the side, the back. The problem is that this is the 'designer angles', this is the angles designers use to make furniture. Even a hack can make it work from those angles, you may realize there's something that's off, but you can't quite put a finger on it.

If you instead look at the chair by walking right up to it and looking almost straight down at it from an angle with one of the hind legs being in the center of your vision, you can in my experience almost always immediately separate the wheat from the chaff. This is an angle no one designs from, and this means that if the chair 'works' from this perspective, then this is no accident but a result of the designer knowing very well what they're doing because the look from this angle is not conscious from their side. If the proportions of the chair are good, it will look good from this perspective, if they don't, well, we have a problem.

An example of this field of view on a Malmsten chair can be found on our homepage, www.mobelhantverk.se (http://www.mobelhantverk.se) , click "Möbler" then click "Sittmöbler". The back is cropped from that image, but you can see how well that chair works, right? Believe me, it is even better with the back included in the view.

In the end, it is always a matter of proportions. That's the basic building stone of our craft, and so many other things in life. But I bore you with my rants: I think your chair is beautiful but needs some work to balance things out.

[myxpykalix]

I appreciate all constructive criticism because you may see something that i don't. This is the only way i learn things. This is my first chair and my only inspiration was this chair that sits in my living room. (kind of ironic ,eh Frank?)


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If you notice the seat is mostly flat, the legs straight and contains mostly straight lines. So i was trying to emulate this to a degree.

I agree that it looks a bit "beefy" but that was the look i was going for. In a bit of self criticism, as i look at it i'm wondering if it would look better if it had some arms attached to it?
I guess most of my influence in thinking about the proportions comes from the chair shown here and old errol flynn movies where you see ornately carved high back chairs.
As far as balace (weightwise) it seems to sit well without being backheavy or tipping. I appreciate your comments as there are things i never considered when starting on this that I will use next time. And before i start I will be emailing you for sure.