An Interesting Chair

Dave Richards

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SE Minnesota
I found this while doing my morning surf of a few design websites.
ar_050514_01.jpg

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More images.

I was going to post another image of a woman sitting in it but decided I'd better not. ;)
 
It has that mid-century modern look to it (popular now-adays), but I see it being weak in the 45 deg angle joints on the bottom and in the smaller areas od the big dowel pins where they go through the frame.

Even if it was beech it might still be close to failure at those points with a heavy person sitting in it, or someone sitting down heavily.

Are you thinking of building it, because is sure is a beautiful design.

maybe the metal banding is a stainless frame of some sort with wood on each side?

I'd plug this chair, as a one off, at $4,500 list in a desgin center frequented by interior designers in a big city such as LA or New York

as long as the leather was top quailty. (there is a type/grain/weight of leahter they use for the MCM stuff)

In your home it sure would be an eye catcher.
 
You can see in the photos I posted that there is a metal spine sandwiched between the wooden parts. I'm guessing it isn't really all that flimsy. It is, probably, more likely to be found in a gallery or one of those homes where no one ever uses the furniture than in a home like mine.
 
It is beautiful.

However, I look at it and think about the things it would do to my body.
It looks to me like:
If you lie back you have to support 15 pounds of ugly fat which would kill your neck and shoulders. Or rest your head (or neck) on some darned uncomfortable looking wood.
If you scoot your butt back to prevent the first problem---you would probably find that your butt would like to scoot forward again and that could cause some serious problems.

I sure would like to try sitting in it however.
I sure would like to see it "in person" also.

Enjoy,
JimB
 
maybe the metal banding is a stainless frame of some sort with wood on each side?

It appears to be - if you look closely you can see the metal stringer on both sides of the front upright and if you look carefully at the pics at the site Dave linked to you can see the back is the same. I think in this case the wood provides mostly lateral stability while the metal provides a core of strength.

I think it would be pretty tough to do with just wood... You could hide the metal by splitting a piece of wood and coring out where the metal insert went and then gluing it back together. With the right wood I think it would be near seamless and that would be a real puzzler for people trying to figure out how it was made :D

OTOH apparently this is strong enough to sit on: http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/store/blog/654/
so maybe it would be possible...
 
Ryan, I had the opportunity to sit on a Z-chair similar to that one although it was made of solid wood joined with splines. I was certain it would fail under my weight but it didn't. It is a little springy but it never even sounded like it would break. It was the maker's first attempt at the chair which turned out quite nicely.
DSC06370
 
Ryan, I had the opportunity to sit on a Z-chair similar to that one although it was made of solid wood joined with splines. I was certain it would fail under my weight but it didn't. It is a little springy but it never even sounded like it would break. It was the maker's first attempt at the chair which turned out quite nicely.

That's nice! I think I like the look of the splined version better than any of the others I've seen. The gentle curves on that one are pretty spiffy as well, they really add a air of refinement to it imho - I suspect that they also add to the strength a bit?

There's a lot more surface area there than with the Armada though so I'm not sure the structural argument carries over.. would be interesting to try :D

Jim: I think the Armada chair would be sort of like sitting in a truncated hammock. If you like hammocks (I do :D) it would likely be fairly comfortable. The main part I'm not sure about is where the leather comes over the dowel on the bottom, seems like that could dig into the legs at the wrong angle (yeah I saw the picture where they are above it - my angle of repose tends to be a bit more flat though so :D).

The leather looks a smidge fatter than it should be if it was just leather so I'm guessing that there is also some sort of stiffening core in it as well..


Hmm "hammock frame".. - google search images for "wooden hammock frame" and you'll see a number of frames not entirely dissimilar to this. Most have a smidge more bracing at the corners or are rounded more but I'm leaning more towards possible with minor edits. Definitely if done as a bent wood glue lam (which might require slightly rounder curves but could be close..).
 
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