Turned Miniature Eisteddfod Chair

Having had the honour to be commissioned again to make a miniature chair for Cymdeithas Ceredigion‘s 2016 Eisteddfod I decided to put my all into making a turned miniature chair. Since turning is my main medium for working with wood it made sense to explore this method to make the chair. I’ve made chairs for Cymdeithas Ceredigion before, both a full size chair and two miniature chairs, however I used more traditional methods for these chairs. (The 2015 miniature chair, described here and here, was made out of Laburnum and the 2014 was made of Elm.)

I had a prototype turned chair floating around the workshop which I’d made a couple of years ago. I wasn’t happy with it but felt it did have possibilities. However, translating that into something I would be willing to allow to be presented as a prize was quite another matter. My projects almost always have the natural shape or figuring of the wood as the starting point. Even when asked to make something to exact criteria usually the specific wood plays a big part (apart from replicas for antiques which obviously need to fulfil a different brief). It is the beauty of the particular wood that I want to enhance by turning it from a lump of wood into a shape that is useful and hopefully pleasing to the eye. All my other chairs had been made in this way. The full size chair, made of Ash, used the natural shape the wood had grown and been planked, the miniature Elm chair used wood deliberately chosen and sawn to create an idea of arms using the way burrs grow out of wood and the idea behind the miniature Laburnum chair (and here) was keeping all the outer edge of the chair in the sapwood whilst the rest of the chair was heartwood. All three of these chairs also used as few pieces of wood as possible again to keep the emphasis on the wood rather than the manufacture.

The starting point of this miniature chair was different. It was the method of manufacture that was the starting point and so it had to be based on a circular form, since I don’t do multi axis and off-centre work. Then there was how to hold it on the lathe. And finally, since I haven’t made this sort of thing before, getting the design pleasing to the eye, the proportions appropriate and balanced from all angles whilst keeping it possible for me to physically make on the lathe. I am not good at sitting down with pen and paper anyway, but I really didn’t see ay point in doing that with this project as it wouldn’t make any difference how nice it looked if I couldn’t make it. So I resigned myself to making one, studying it, making another, putting them together, living with them, viewing them from every angle, putting them away for a while to let my sub-conscious have a chance to have an input. So I now have a line of miniature chairs on a high shelf in the workshop, gathering dust.

I chose Ash for this chair. I deliberately chose a plain wood so it was the shape that was important. It is turned from a whole branch which means the top of the back and the arms have perfect concentric growth rings.

I never like leaving things to the last minute so I have been living with this chair for a while now before it goes. I critically examine it, wonder what it would be like with different legs, a lower back or more splayed, in a different wood and so on. In fact now I’ve started turning chairs I’d love to make more.

I have posted a video on Youtube here ac yng Nghymraeg yma.