Charles Rohlfs Hall Chair

I chose to build this chair because a fellow student recognized the style of furniture I was drawn to and suggested I do some research into Charles Rohlfs. Once I started reading about his furniture and seeing his pieces, I knew I wanted to build one. The carving that makes up the splat of this chair looked like a great challenge for me.
I reached out to several museums that have one of these chairs in their collection, including the St Louis Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Using the measurements they provided, I began drafting my version of the chair, but that is where my problems began. The posts for this chair are so impossibly thin, it’s difficult to use solid joinery that will actually be effective. I spent many hours, working and reworking strategies on how exactly I would join the chair together. A particularly difficult area was the two middle front posts. Each posts has three tenons coming into the post at the same height. The post is only 3/4” x 3/4”. I worked with multiple instructors in order to problem solve this.
On the original chairs, it appears as if Rohlfs used dowels, at least decoratively, at most of the joints, and we concluded that it’s likely these are actually plugs, covering up screws that are being used to reinforce the impossibly thin joints. As I put the chair together, I was really worried at how easily it twisted and moved, even after being glued together, but there were two major moments where the piece really came together. First, when I inserted the splat into the back assembly. It immediately gave the whole piece tremendous rigidity. Finally, when I added the frets at the corners of the feet. They appear decorative only, but they are stub tenoned into the posts and feet and add extra rigidity to the front and back of the chair.
All that being said, I didn’t let anyone sit in it, not even myself, until it was finished and photos had been taken. Just in case. Directly after graduation ceremony, when we all came back to the school, I let all of my classmates and instructors one by one come and sit in the chair. I’m proud to say it held up very well.
All photo credit: Lance Patterson
Dimensions: 56.5”T x 17.5”W x 19.75”D
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