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Chinese Arm Chair

comments (2) August 7th, 2011 in Reader's Gallery

garrettfurniture garrettfurniture, member
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This is a piece I wanted to build after seeing it in a wonderful book: Chinese Domestic Furniture by Gustav Ecke. The traditional Chinese joinery and designs illustrated in the text inspired me to learn these techniques, such as the keyed scarf joints in the bow of the chair. The chair is walnut, finished with tung oil and my own wax. It is 37" tall by 29" wide.


Design or Plan used: Not specified
posted in: Reader's Gallery, chair, walnut, asian inspired
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Comments (2)

garrettfurniture garrettfurniture writes: Thanks, BenchMarc. I was attempting to make a actual reproduction of the chair in the Ecke book, which I recommend for any furniture makers as a reference. As far as the carved brackets my thoughts are this. The thing that is most appealing to me about the Chinese furniture designs are the use of complex interlocking joints to achieve forms that are basic and logical. I find their use particularly of negative space to be completey modernistic, even though they were done centuries before those ideas took root in the western world. The whole form, viewed at once is what I'm drawn to rather than the individual details. So I would resist adding more embellishments. Plus, I'm just not a great carver! Hey, if you want to see more pics of this chair being made, and some other Chinese stuff check my georgegarrett funiture facebook page or www.georgegarrett.com. thanks again for the comments.
Posted: 1:44 pm on August 14th

BenchMarc BenchMarc writes: I really love this chair. Do you have more pictures of it? I'm assuming that you copied the chair exactly as you saw it in the book, however, I wonder if you were to make it again - would you wrap the carved brackets around to the side? They are such an attractive detail and the high execution of the rest of the chair almost demands that you pull out all stops.
Posted: 8:21 pm on August 11th

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