Showcase piece - the Wylam Story Chair

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At the beginning of 2019 I was approached by the Wylam WI group who wanted to commission a specific piece to celebrate their centenary.  The group had decided that they would like to donate a "story chair" to their local library and asked if I would offer them some ideas on design.  The resulting design won their approval and the chair was delivered in October 2019 for the grand presentation at the library.  The idea of the story chair is that it provides a specific place for an adult and a child to sit together and read a story.  The chair therefore needs to be big enough to accommodate both of them, and ideally have some interesting character of its own.

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My design combined several elements but most fundamental of all was that the chair should be both strong and stable.  I chose to make the back of the chair and the arm/leg components to be the biggest features.  The back consists of five boards of different native species (Ash, Beech, Cherry, Elm and Oak) each of which has an image of its leaf as a blind cutout.  The arm/leg components were designed to be organic in form but also extremely strong - they are of laminated Oak.

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The photos below show the construction of the chair and its final resting place in the library