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 ...