vw chair 001 - 2023

I created this chair after seeing an another chair in the background of an instagram post in the Summer of 2022.  There was no ID on the chair so after scouring the internet for almost an hour I found out it was Pierre Jeanneret's office chair.  Or most likely a dupe.  

This was the first time I'd ever come to notice and appreciate the design of a chair.  At the time, I wasn't sure why I was so drawn to it, but I was obsessed so I began sketching it, and eventually sketching my own.

After sketching, and finalizing my own designs measurements and proportions, I needed to build it.  A few Youtube videos later I was ordering woodworking tools and devoting all of my free time to making my chair come to life.

With a basic understanding of woodworking I got rid of my bed, turned my only bedroom into a woodworking studio and slept on the couch for the next few months.  

My chair design was sculptural and monolithic so I decided on the quickest way to see my design concept come to life was to have the chair shape repeated until it was wide enough to sit on.  

The first attempt was made out of MDF and the pieces were cut manually with a jigsaw. But even with a guide, it was difficult to cut each piece precisely.  After gluing the pieces together I decided not to sand the edges flush as I was now aware of how much sawdust MDF produced. MDF also proved to be much heavier than anticipated so I decided to try plywood.

Plywood was much lighter and produced less sawdust.  But I knew I didn't want to cut the pieces by hand again and after to spend days routing and/or sanding so I purchased a 4'x4' cnc machine that took up the majority of my bedroom/woodworking studio.  Putting together the CNC machine solo took a few days and learning the software was simple enough. I  was lucky enough to live next door to the leasing office on the second floor so the noise wasn't an issue for my neighbors.

I used illustrator to sketch and fine-tune the chair shape dimensions and exported the svg file into the cnc cutting software to start cutting.  

The pieces were immaculately cut and after all the pieces were cut, I realized I could make a second hollow chair from the off cuts (vw chair 002).  

The glue up proved to be harder than expected but I was glad to finally have my sketch come to life a year later.  I had a million ideas for how I wanted to finish it, but ended up with this ox blood paint w/ a high gloss reflective ceramic coating.