chair challenge

5/13 ... we delivered this challenging rosewood chair last weekend ... this project was a real wrestling match for everyone involved. the upholsterer had a long backlog and then, a long struggle with the edelman 'rattlesnake' leather ... i have to agree, it was an unusual material, and, for him, a real bear to work with. looks great though; sits great; glad it's done ... cool object ...
the challenge ... make a chair from a photo .... if you've never tried it, it's not easy ... we had a photo that the client took from a french website of a "Lady Vanity Chair by Christian Krass (Design of JE Ruhlmann) france, 1930, 'very elegant and slender vanity chair by Christian Krass after design of J.E. Ruhlmann' ". .. since my client didn't want to order the chair from france and also wanted it to match the other furniture we made for her dressing room a few years ago, she called on us to do the job ... we had no measurements or details but we went at it in the only way we know how ... make a full size mock up; sit in it; walk around it and make changes mentally before building the real thing ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
mock up on the left ... the real thing, (in morado), on the right ... in this photo, we have made a cardboard template for fitting the real back piece, which is actually a section of a cone and tough to fit. we glued it up on a curved form already on hand from a previous project ...
at this point, we realized that the back seat rail also had to curve out to match so we had to make a new one of those ... details, details ...
next we fitted the real backsplat (two wacky wood layers and two and 2 1/8" birch ply layers) and made up the bookmatched/slip matched veneered piece that would finish it off. next we glued that to the fitted backsplat and flushed it up ...
viola' ...
one thing i kick myself for not noticing was that the back legs of the original chair are vertical and parallell, and i did mine in my typical, 'turned out' fashion that gives the chair a little more style. but, it also makes the legs flare out at the top which made making the back piece removable for upholstering a real challenge ... i fooled around with it for a long time, moving the tapered connectors, filling bad screw holes etc, but i finally got it. it will take two people and a clamp to install the upholstered back splat, but hey, what are friends for?
you can see the connectors here ... photo of the matching splat hardware later ...
it's in the finishing process now .... it will be dark and shiny and luscious and will be upholstered in edelman 'rattle snake skin' leather (be sure to check out that link for some serious style) ... it should be a knockout ... can't wait ...

An Art Deco Bar Cabinet

We delivered a nice Art Deco influenced sideboard/bar last week ... It was a fun and challenging project. Someone referred to it as 'Dean Martin's Bar' ... I lived in Palm Springs in 1970 for a winter, and it would have been right at home in the house we rented for sure ... The design was a quick sketch I doodled off after a series of rejected CAD drawings ... Sometimes the quickest drawings are the best ... Anyway, there was more to building this then first meets the eye when you look at the sketch. Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Trevor fluted the legs on the cnc ... we stopped the detail at the tops and bottoms of the door/panels

Will then mortised the legs and created the back and side panels

We couldn't come up with any way to easily do the concentric squares, so we filled the micro pin holes with hide glue and walnut sawdust and sanded them off the next day ... worked sweet and even took the stain and paint ...

Panels finished and case parts ready to assemble

Assembly without the panels

After we applied the moldings to the 1/2" mdf doors, we had to rabbet the door edges and install solid wood edges ... hence the masking tape in this photo

Corner and door close up.....stainless steel knife hinges from Brusso Hardware

Trevor put the lights in even though they were cut from the budget ... We had them on hand from another project and it didn't seem right without them ...

Then we mocked up up the metal end pieces and mirror frame size and got those dimensions all finalized

The finishing process for this piece involved applying a coat of fairly strong brown/red aniline dye, sanding that pretty aggressively and then applying a second coat of the stain along with some black latex paint at the same time ... That mix was sponged around until 'it looked right' and then polished about a half hour later with steel wool and paper towels ... This paint/stain mix makes a nice durable finish as is, but we always add a couple top coats of oil varnish mix for a little shine ... I finished my kitchen with this finish 10 years ago and with a little damp spongeing it comes back to looking pretty much like new ... I have reoiled once or twice in the last 10 years ...

Before the oil coats

after

With the steel galleries by Sam in plce. They had threaded rods welded to their bottoms and were bolted on from under the frames ... We REALLY liked this piece and felt it was one of the most differect and strongest designs for the year ... Happy New Year !

An Art Deco Macassar Ebony Cabinet

Will, signing the piece .. click to enlarge the pictures Be sure to check the comment below from 'Lurch' about the inlay in the inspiration photo ... power of the internet ...

Close up of the finished inlay

All in ... all done ... delivered to the city

12/23/ 08 ... the cabinet is off to the finishers. Shown above, the construction is totally finished and Tuesday Will and I took to a friend's shop (Holman Studios) and disassembled it to the bones to be sprayed with a fine Art Deco style lacquer finish .... Click photos to enlarge them ...

This is a quick update before we rout the doors for the circular inlay. We fitted the doors and edged them with 2/16" strips of ebony so we can sand them for final fitting. The doors themselves are quartered mahogany vertical grain panels panels with 1/16th" crossbanding. The poplar board on the right is a test fit for the rather fussy to locate, (but extremely elegant), knife hinges.

Here the doors have been veneered and the hinges have been cut in .... central inlay tomorrow

11/23/08

OK, here comes another long one ... We're wrapping up a cabinet that is loosely based on a period piece by the French designer Clement Mere who made fabulous Art Deco Style pieces in the 20's ... When my client sent me the picture, her exact words were "Hi, We don't have to copy it exactly, so we'll work with this as an inspiration." ... Good thing ... I'd like to meet the guy who could copy that one .... How did they do that inlay or whatever it is ???? .. Here's the picture .. Click the photos to enlarge them ...

Anyway, I did some trial sketches for the central inlay and we finally settled on part of a design from a Tiffany vase that the client liked.

We tried doing it like the picture with two different ovals alternating around a circle, but settled on four the same.

Drew the inlay and cabinet in our cad program

Trevor made a sample inlay confirming that we wanted the oval designs all the same

We got some Macassar ebony veneer from our friends at Certainly Wood ... They have a GREAT website where you can actually pick the flitch of veneer you're buying, which was extremely helpful for my client.

Veneered some mahogany legs (with ebony corners so we could bevel them a bit) and some mahogany panels for the top, bottom, sides and doors ... see the photo at the top of this post ..

And now we're ready to veneer the doors and wrap it up ... Update later this week or next

And cut the ebony and mother of pearl for the central door inlays.

The central inlay is almost complete

Wenge, Hickory and Steel Art Deco Style Pieces

12/9/07

These pieces all had their seperate design and execution complications, but in the end, they all came out well and all the complications were resolved. One of the nicest details is the angled tops of the wenge cases that are complemented by the recessed, round hickory moldings that set off the recessed again hickory doors and drawers. That stepping in feature led us on quite a hunt to find the proper hinges when we remembered that the client wanted mirrors on the insides of the doors.
The low piece is two sided and only 32" deep so the drawers had to be fairly shallow. We ended up making the door cabinet shallow which allowed half of the drawers on one side to be deeper. The top is faux painted mdf for the photo and the piece will have an onyx top when it gets to NYC.
The tall chest was the most straight forward of the three, but selecting the veneers for a pleasing light/dark pattern involved some trial and error.
The armoire was just like the others, only bigger, heavier, and hair raising to get the two big veneered doors to lie in a plane and close correctly given the lack of case frame structure. Most of the work on these pieecs was done by Mark Granfors before he moved South. Finishing by Jeremy Russell, steel bases by Sam Mosheim and Jim Parsons. Teamwork, teamwork.