Just two boards. What could go wrong?
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The 1stdibs web site recently featured an historically important chair: The "Chippendale" chair by Robert Venturi. With his wife, Denise Scott Brown, Venturi defined and led the "postmodern" school of architecture and design that reigned from the late 1970s to the 1990s.
The chair is made of two pieces of plywood, with the back pierced in a vaguely Chippendale pattern. Simple, right? Not so fast. When I looked closely, I saw that the plywood was not a uniform thickness. The back piece is about 1/2 in. thick at the crest and 3/4 in. at the floor. Same for the seat piece, which is tapered where it abuts the back. And the images on 1stdibs didn't make it clear how much the sides tapered from front to back. I think I overdid it.
Best,
dh -
Cool!
So do you think the original was made by sanding the plywood to a taper or by laminating tapered veneers?
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Dave,
Thanks for the compliment.
It looks as if the center ply is tapered, with the face plies a uniform thickness. -
Ah, that would make sense. It would be nice to have the capability in the shop to handle that sort of thing.
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Michael Fortune has probably been there, done that.
The chair I modeled was made by Knoll, so it isn't surprising that it uses tapered plywood. -
That's pretty awesome. In our shop we would spend a week or more steam bending various plywoods, veneers and trim pieces. The most I ever saw was a 90 degree turn with about a 4" radius and a 2' 180 with a solid maple. However, All of these pieces fit inside a 12" pvc pipe for pressure steaming. I don't know how we would have managed something like that. I would imagine a veneering method with a form and a press. I don't know if I would sit on one made by me though...
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Nice! My guess would be that it was laminated over a form rather than bent from pre-made plywood. I don't know whether they used vacuum bagging yet when the original was made, but it wouldn't be terribly hard using that technique. That would also make it possible to include a tapered center layer.
Steve
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The original chairs were first made in the mid-1980s. I'm almost certain they were made by laminating thin layers, not by bending ready-made plywood. But I don't know whether they were made with brute force and tons of clamps, or with vacuum bags.
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