I am a worker in wood. This has led me to Mendocino to study with some of the most talented people in the craft at the Krenov school of fine woodworking. This is where I am now, and I want to tell you a story about my most recent project.
I decided to make a Danish lounge chair as my second semester project. There’s only one rule for chairmaking in the Krenov school and it is this: you cannot design your own chair as a first year student. You must find a chair which already exists; one that already has plans drawn. This is because the design process takes too long, and you are likely to miss the landing zone in May at the spring show if you take a month drawing and mocking up your own chair.
I found the chair of my dreams. The GE 290 designed by Hans Wegner, who designed over 500 chairs in his life, and some iconic ones. The chairs Kennedy and Nixon sat in when they debated in 1960 were a Wegner design.
When I presented this idea to my instructors, they said that there are a few more rules with a chair like this. Since it is still in production in Denmark, I had to reach out to the producer and let them know that I am making it. In addition to this, I also had to find design drawings since they are under lock-and-key. Completely hidden from the entire web and books. Trust me, I looked.
I composed what I thought was a cordial, safe email to the house still producing the GE 290, Getama in Denmark. The reply I received back was not what I was hoping for
Yikes. These Danes don’t play. Not only are they nonplussed by me making this chair, but more consequently they did not send me design drawings.
I remained determined. To move forward, I had to reverse-engineer this chair based on pictures from the internet.
I had a side-view photo blown up to the exact dimensions as specified by Wegner in one of his books. I then traced over this blown up print, and formulated my own design drawings.
Next, I made a rough mockup with cheap 2x6 redwood and screws. Much more challenging than I thought. The hard part was getting the angles just right on both sides of the chair. I was doing a fair amount of guesswork. For example: the dimensions state that the chair is 34" wide. I wasn’t sure if this meant from widest point to widest point, or if the seat itself was 34". Turned out to be the former, but I didn’t figure that out until after I made the mockup and sat in it. It was a damn loveseat!
So I shortened things up, and finally I had a physical model I could adhere to when making the real thing. Next step: wood selection.
Traditionally, this chair is made from oak. I wanted to put a major California flare on this thing, so my inclination was to use walnut. The trick is to find grain graphics that match the swoop of the back legs.
I consulted with the director of my program, Laura Mays. An absolute visionary in the craft, and someone who doesn’t sugar coat anything. She looked at my templates, thought for a moment, then told me where to look. Deep in one of the storage containers there is some California black walnut which she thought would work. Sure enough, the slabs she was talking about had grain graphics that matched my templates perfectly.
I cut out the parts I would use for the chair, and let them acclimate. As the wood was coming the a dry moisture level, I perfected the templates.
Then I carefully cut the pieces to final shape using the templates. Starting with the band saw, then a spokeshave, and, in some instances, the shaper with a flush trim bit riding its bearing on the template.
The joinery was pretty straight forward. The entire thing is floating tenons and dowels. The tricky part was the angles that were not 90 degrees.
At this stage, all the pieces were still separate, meaning not glued together. The only glued joint at this point was the boomerang L shape connecting the back legs to the back vertical stile. The next steps went as follows:
I rounded over almost all edges on the shaper.
Sanded all individual members to 220 grit.
Glued up! First the four back rails (pictured above) plus the front rail.
Glued the front legs into the chair sides and front rail.
Glued the arms on. This left only the seat frame as the remaining unglued member.
Raised the grain. In this process I soaked a sponge in water and wet the entire thing. It releases all this micro fuzz that would otherwise come out when finish is applied.
Sanded entire thing to 320, then final polish at 400.
Glued the seat frame with 15 dowels into the bottom rear rail, and 6 dowels at the front rail.
Finished the chair with Rubio Monocoat.
At this point you may be wondering how I made the cushions for this chair. Well I am sorry to say that I outsourced that to a professional upholsterer. He did fabulous work.
This chair was such a joy to build, and by reverse-engineering it from pictures, I felt like I was right there with Hans Wegner himself when he designed this beauty back in the 50s.
One last thing I will note: sitting in this chair (as I am currently doing as I write this) is a completely different experience than sitting in any other chair I have sat in. You know when you make a meal for yourself and you sit down after slicing, grating, seasoning, roasting, etc… the meal tastes better than it otherwise would if someone else made it. Maybe “better” isn’t the perfect word to use here, but there is certainly some higher pleasure one gets out of enjoying their labor. When I sit in this chair, I get this same feeling. I think of each and every tenon and dowel that I spent time with, shaping and working, now buried inside this chair where no one will find them. No one knows the history of shaping these tiny pieces of wood. Heck, most people don’t even consider they exist. But I think of each one as I adjust my posture, as I lay my hand on the arm and think: man, what a fun journey.
