Miniature chair

This miniature chair is made from Laburnum and commissioned by Cymdeithas Ceredigion to be given as a prize at their Eisteddfod. Deceptively simple but this chair was actually very tricky to make. The two sides had to match, the back had to be in proportion, the sapwood had to line up perfectly between them all and there could be no sapwood at the back of the seat or where the back and seat meet. I had sawn, planed and seasoned four to five times this amount of slices but these were the only four that would work together. They had been seasoning for a year as wood cut in this way is more prone to splitting than if it is cut along the grain. (These slices are cut at a diagonal to the trunk.) Therefore if I made a mistake there was no second chance. And since the integrity of the piece depended on the simplicity I couldn’t cut these slices up and glue them back together.
The size and shape of the slices also meant there was a limit to the use of machines so it really was hand work – slow and careful. The back ended up lower than I had first intended making the feel of the chair more cosy and domestic rather than regal and throne-like but I’m happy to say that was the wood choosing how it wanted to be. Also if there had been a slice of wood for the back where the sapwood had been less mottled I would have chosen that. The chair is about eight inches high and five inches across if I remember rightly.

Learn more about the chair in my earlier blog here and more about Laburnum here.