Let me introduce you to "Ceres." "Ceres is a chair, who has been rattling around my brain for the past two years. We are finally able to introduce her to the general public. I am very proud of her, I think she is very beautiful. I am very proud of the people who have helped me bring her into the world. I think that maybe we will make a lot of money with her. ( I was wrong )

We named "Ceres" after the Greek goddess of spring and, like a true woman, she is not only beautiful but complicated. The story of "Ceres" really goes back probably four or five years into my fascination for the dining chair. A fine chair should almost be the human being in negative. It should hold and support and enhance the person that sits within it, and that is the thing about a chair: a person sits within it. Although no two people are the same, the human frame by and large has remained a constant throughout history so there is an historical continuum to be maintained. Most modern chairs seem to work against that historical continuum. I regret that I am not impressed by this. Contemporary chair designers by and large seem to wish their chairs to be photographed rather than sat in, to be admired rather than enjoyed. "Ceres", on the other hand, is definitely a lady to be enjoyed.

I have wanted for a long time to make a feminine chair. I dont think I have quite got as far as I wanted to go in this direction but I would hope that very shortly "Ceres" will have some pretty sisters to play with.

"Ceres" is the chair designed to go with circular tables. The chair shown opposite is in American Black Walnut with a fully upholstered and sprung seat. We have also made this chair in American Maple with a dropin seat and, as I write this, I am looking at a very fine example in Yew and another in English Walnut. For a small workshop such as this to develop, prototype and jig a quite complex chair like "Ceres" takes a good deal of time and money. If we count my design time and my consultation time with my client and the development time with the craftsman, Dave Woodward, then I think we are talking around three months work without having made any real chairs. All this has to be paid for and in this case we had a very kind client who allowed us to use his job as a prototyping base for this new product. We made a very large circular table for this gentleman and he needed ten chairs to go around it.

The first stage of the job was to do presentation drawings of different types of chairs. My presentation drawings are on A3 water colour paper. On this scale it is not really possible to work out how a chair is going to exactly look but it was enough to give my client a good idea. The next stage, which was much more about chair making, was to make a prototype. In order to develop this I had to make a full scale drawing of the chair. This is a very tight drawing because heights and angles are quite critical on a chair. It was also in many ways quite loose because the chair is a three dimensional object that changes as one walks around it. Now the craftsman was involved, I am very fortunate in having a group of people who work with me who can interpret and develop my ideas. I really don't like the common consensus amongst designer makers that a designer gives the craftsman the finished and detailed drawings and that craftsman then translates them into a wooden object. I believe very strongly that the design process should continue into the construction and I have developed a way of collaborating with my makers which enables a piece such as "Ceres" to grow in the process of making. Dave Woodward then entered the scene and if anybody should take credit for the development of "Ceres" then it's Dave Woodward. His creative sensitivity and supreme craftsmanship have enabled what could have been a quite mundane chair design to grow into something which is, I feel, very beautiful.

"THE CRAFT OF CABINETMAKING"   ARTICLE 7

by David Savage

FIRST PUBLISHED "WOODWORKER MAGAZINE

go to part 2 of this article