Chair Fuses Best of East and West

Synopsis: See how John Cameron blends the design of a 500-year-old Ming Dynasty chair with modern furniture in his version of the “official’s hat” armchair.

John Cameron’s new chair blends the distinctive styling of a Chinese Ming Dynasty chair with the comfort and structure of a contemporary Western one. Cameron found a superb example of the “official’s hat” armchair in his well-thumbed copy of Wang Shixiang’s landmark book Classic Chinese Furniture (shown above). He closely followed the upper part of that chair in his own design. But for reasons of comfort and strength, he designed the lower half more in line with a contemporary Western chair. He replaced the mitered seat frame, round legs, and glueless joinery of the Ming chair with a robust system of seat rails double-tenoned into legs and reinforced with hidden corner blocks under an upholstered seat.

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