Design Week T.O. - Full Scale Prototype

I forgot to take pictures when visiting exhibitions at Design T.O. and the Interior Design Show (IDS) a few weeks back. I visited Still Life, Life Still and IDS; I did not get to too many of the shows or talks as I was taking in the shows I was seeing and was not thinking about taking pictures of them.

I worked at IDS for my company, Atelier Arking. I talked to many interior designers and makers. It was a great experience, to be able to explain what my company does and to make new connections with people. The whole show was overwhelming, so many companies showing their products and services, I could not get through all of it.

The other show I visited was 'Still Life, Life Still' by Simone Ferkul and Wesley Chau. They approached me in October of 2019 and commissioned me to build their furniture pieces for their show. It was a pleasure to build such pieces and be trusted with both of their first showcases independently. I do not have good pictures of the finished pieces. But here is a detail shot of the table and chair together.

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Fabrication Begins:

From there I worked every day in the furniture studio to get myself through to the next milestone, midterm presentations. The step I am almost through is the physical development of my chair, joinery and all. The joinery is the most difficult part of this chair and I was not sure the jigs and forms would work for the steam bending. The hard part of this section was turning the leg/spindle pieces and then bending them afterwards. It is time consuming to accurately turn a spindled piece and then throw it in the steamer and then have it break around the form. Luckily only one broke of the three I made so I was able to use them in my prototype.

Next step in the process is feeding the spindles through the chair seat and into the crest rail/back rest. The difficulty is drilling the holes they are to pass through in the crest rail. By feeding the spindle through I could see, approximately what the angle of attack the drill should be at. I drilled it free hand just keeping it steady in my hand all the way through.

After some time fine tuning the spindle, I managed to feed it through on one side, and then the other and then the much easier back spindles, which were just straight through, no curves.

From here I was able to dry fit the entire chair and sit in it. Now all I have to do is wedge the spindles and flush cut them and glue and this prototype will be complete.

The final design approaches quickly! I cannot wait to see what comes next. Stay tuned!