2nd Office re fit well underway for Hancocks the Jewelers – working with James Huddlestone.
Layout for office desk space flow.

And these forms will all become perfectly clear – eventually – pair of folding/locking exterior benches for Southwark Borough Council.
Prep for concrete foundation blocking.

5 new office chairs near completion for Hancocks the Jewelers office in the Burlington Arcade, London, W1
Final clean up now underway, then oil burnish finish and application of stainless steel badge monogram, then off to upholsters for the final touch.
Will post more images when complete.

See earlier post – ‘Wood for the trees‘ – for original concept drawing for the chairs.
See earlier post – ‘New Year – Desks‘ – to see the desks that these chairs were designed for.

Walrus Nebula – The large chestnut burr coffee table nears completion, now commencing final oil finishing. Legs in bleached ash.
meanwhile new chairs for ‘Hancocks’ the Jewellers taking shape.

Welcome to Ivory Towers.

Inverted Walrus.

Now all is clear?

Elsewhere, in another part of the world of chaircreative…

The accumulation of chair components – legs.

Meanwhile, this fabulous coffee table is taking shape at the workshop. Burr chestnut.
Oh the joys of electric chainsaws!

Here you can see the rough profile taking shape.

The character of the burr is of course quite fantastic. We had the burr board milled to 110 mm thickness to give the table a look of real substance and allow the creation of the sumptuous rolled edges. It was also decided to maintain as much of the fissure details as possible within the piece – very much reminiscent of craggy coastlines. The shape also following a marine biased theme – sails, hulls, sharks teeth and flint arrow heads…
When complete this will be a 3 leg design – 2300 x 950 max width.

It is often so obvious of course it is easy to forget the magic of wood.
Wood of course grows – in trees!
Yes we of course all know this, however, sometimes it is really beneficial to feel or realize the connection of this.
That wonderful stuff that grows all around us. And on a spring day such as today an extra sparkle of magic.

Selecting cherry wood for the next set of chairs near Bore Place, W. Kent with John Waller.

Back at the workshop the start of the journey from trees to chairs. The 1st stage – cleaving the runs or billets for the legs. Cleft with the grain to maintain the full strength of the wood, these sections will be shaped then steam bent to a similar curve as to the example piece on top to form the front leg components of these chairs – Hancocks Nimm type

Following images begin to give an idea to what the Insictor form is all about and the layering of elemental keys.
The fluid transitions rise and fall, escarpment, swathe and hollow.
Traveling at speed below the edge line of the South Down.
Whilst at the same time transcending scales – animated in motion, walking, crawling at perhaps no more than 6 mm high.

It is a complex project and a long way still to go as yet.
The thread bars that lock the elements onto the stainless steel frame. Eventually these will be shortened and capped.
Middle section profiling next.

Now the main structure and assembly is well underway, its time to begin looking at the style, line weights and fluid transitions of the components.
Its quite a task. The main components are quite large and being totally irregular in form, clamping and gripping takes time to set up to work on each of the component pieces.
The images show one of the lower leg arrangements taking shape.
As each cut progresses periodic re-assembly is required in order to evaluate the form in its entirety.
Insictor is an asymmetric piece, however it is still imperative that the overall form appears reflectively balanced and that each line weight movement flows gracefully into the next.

Insictor structure begins to take shape – strung together on a stainless steel tube sub frame assembly.
At this stage nearly all legs have been initially fitted to the body structure although the compound curve gap set joints previously mentioned are still to be fully formed.

These images give a first glimpse to the spatial presence of the piece and you can perhaps begin to get a sense of what this work is all about.

And here are a couple of sneak glimpses of the new hammerhead chair. (see earlier posts)
You will be able to experience this piece soon at the end of March – 21st Century Furniture – The Arts & Crafts Legacy 2 – exhibition.
At the Millinery Works, Islington, London

For those unable to attend – full set of images will be published April.