my latest chair

i have acquired this chair for the last part of this project, i will be destructing and re-constructing this chair to come up with new and exciting ideas and developments. This will all be documented by photographs as the process happens. By the end of the process i hope to have only a skeleton of what the original chair was, which will also tie in with the dark theme from my other chairs.

my skull designs.

 The next set of images are the versions i want to use to carve out of wood and add to the chair.

Here is a quick placement of the skull designs ruffly cut out of wood will be placed

3rd chair

I got this chair as it had very distinctive features that i wanted to play with, also it was very different to the other two that i had done before. When i got the chair home i had to do a few minor repairs to make it sturdy and ready to work on.

I first removed the seat and striped the coverings to see if i had to replace the cushioning but i did'nt. i had a relatively good idea what i wanted to achieve with this chair, i covered the seat in a black velvet different to the previous chair and then looked into simple (project themed) designs in tattoo books and magazines. looking threw the images i like the idea of a skull but a more modern style tot he traditional tattoo design. With this i went and came up with my skull design to fit in the arm loop areas. I then played around with the design and came up with the final piece which is the skull design in a ring which would fit into the arm of each side. i then looked at the back section and enlarged the skull but got rid of the ring and i plan to cut out the harm and turn the outer arms of that into wings for the central skull back detail.

One thing that in both modern and old chair styles had was there over al decorative design fitted with the feel and decor of the room itself, although a lot of modern design is made to look sleek and to hide within each other to create a clean finnish the older styles had far more going on in the cense art and pattern work as well as fine details so even though it was far more over the top and extravagant it fitted in with the room design. 

Uses of chairs

threw out time the simple chair has been taken from a tool to a decorative piece of furniture to show wealth and now both use and aesthetics are just as important as the other, but with a lot of modern design simple is better and are furniture design reflects that.

looking at these examples you can see the simple shapes to use little material but still look exciting, elegant and modern. With more traditional chairs i.e. during the Victorian age, chairs were far more adventures and bold to show granger and status. 

Also chairs of these time periods were hand crafted and were made to last, and now we have cheap quick and easy to produce chairs that look nice but do not last long or are made in the same process but made by a well known designer and has a huge price tag.

With my work i intend to bring elements from both together to create well made cheap personalised chairs that rival what the victorians made but still fit in with modern society at a low cost.

the second is matt black body and high quality black velvet covering.

two completed chairs

The first is red silk with matt black spray paint and a black tarnished studding.

First and second chairs

 I first went about stripping the chairs to find any problems, luckily the only main one was the foam seating of one of them was in really bad condition. i measured up the size of the foam and bought a new replacement which i cut, grated and sanded to shape.

i then went on to choosing materials, as well as colour scheme. As i said before i wanted a dark feeling to my chairs and to bring old with the new so i went with matt black wood and a deep red silk and a high grade black velvet for the other. i went with two completely different materials as to see the over all outcome, i new the velvet would work as it was nice and thick so would create a nice smooth even finish but the silk is so much more pliable so would be hard to get a even finish.

 i cut out from the original material the pattern for the seat coverings and proceeded to apply them to the chairs.

As they were reproduction they did not use original nails but staples which is what i used as well.

looking and finding my first 2 chairs.

I had a reasonable idea about what i was looking for; something reasonably chunky that i wouldn't damage easily for my first full sized chair to work on. i looked around any where and every where and found a couple on line that i managed to win in a auction, the plus size to these chairs was that they were both reproduction and exactly the same besides a few bumps and nicks in the wood.