INSPIRATIONAL PHASE
I have always been drawn to the personification of chairs.
I adore the feeling of an object, seemingly coming to life.
"A chair's function is not just to provide a place to sit; it is to provide a medium for self-expression. Chairs are about status, for example. Or signalling something about oneself. That's why the words chair, seat and bench have found themselves used to describe high status professions, from academia to Parliament to the law."
After much deliberation, I decided to settle for a chair which I found both relatively simple and talkative.
The legs are positioned in a way that makes it seem ready to pounce.
The back panel has an appealing, delicious softness to it, reminiscent of lilies and elephant ears.
SKETCH PHASE
So I sketched out my own version as a first step (see above). But immediately then I ran into trouble as the back to seat connection is illogical from an engineering woodworker's perspective.
DEFINITIVE DESIGN
I thought long and hard about how I could address this, and figured, if I use a sandwich construction for the seat connection, that might work. And a dovetail connection for the back, it might be enough to bear the load.
But I still wasn't completely satisfied. Then it hit me,
I would need to translate the forces laterally.
The diagram drawn under here explains this.
Then I had yet another idea - what if I gave it a rolling bar?
This relieves a lot of tension from the front connection.
So my internal engineer came up with this: