New Double-bow Windsor Chair in Ash and Elm

I have been wondering how to start my blog for some time and have concluded that the first post should definitely be about a Windsor chair rather than anything tangential to the subject.

One does not often hear about how new designs come about. Most makers seem to prefer to keep this side of the process a mystery and just shrug their shoulders and say something like ‘it just happens!’. In the same way that we all probably think differently, so I am sure ideas for furniture emerge in different ways.

I am a Windsor chairmaker and in no way an artist, but I do enjoy ‘doodling’ chairs to pass the time and develop ideas. I have found that if I can produce a sketch that looks good, even if it is only say 20mm square, then it will look good as a finished chair. It is the relative proportions of the parts, and how they are combined, that determines a good design and nothing about scale or accuracy of drawing. The chair that I will describe started life as this sketch about 12 months ago at the back of a notebook. I was keen to make a double-bow chair but didn’t want to copy an original design.

 

 

 

Pencil sketch of new double-bow Windsor chair

I often start designing a chair with the seat. Most traditional Windsor chair seat designs do not particularly follow the shape of the sitter. They are sometimes square, oval, round…. but we are not square, oval round….! If you sit on a piece of cardboard and draw around your backside and then along each leg, the shape that you get is similar to that in the sketch. One’s legs tend to diverge (like the side of the chair) and the back is rounded. The only decision in this case was how to deal with the front edge. A straight edge doesn’t usually look good, hence the curve.

The next decision was how to shape the arm, but this was easy as I made it  follow closely the shape of the outside of the seat. This is almost a default decision. The arm doesn’t need to follow the seat shape closely and many English chairs have a rounded arm over a ‘square’ seat, but in this case I wasn’t trying to make my life difficult!

Finally there was the bow. I drew on a broad rounded bow and was rather pleased with the result.

The sketch stayed in the notebook for months and I kept looking at it and feeling that here was a pleasing design. Re-sketching didn’t improve matters, so eventually I drew up some plans……….