furniture making

Generational Gallery

Currently in the studio there are three generations of my Gragg chairs, beginning with the very first one completed in 2011 (nearest the camera), a second one that was one of two begun three years ago and whose construction has been filmed (on the work bench), and a third one from the ongoing  Gragg Chair Challenge to be also include in the video project that will have its final in-studio session on Friday.  Given the “special feature” of restoring the original chair so badly damaged at a woodworking show all three chairs are integral to the video project.

Though they are fairly close in the timeline, they each mark an important development in my work of making them.  This in turn is reflected in the amount of time required for me to make them.  The first one took me almost 250 hours as I was working out many of the construction and decorative details.  The second one was about half that time and the third one even faster by the time it is finished.  Still the greatest expenditure of time on the whole project is the pinstriping, which takes me about four days to complete.

My revisions of the construction process in particular continue to progress, even this week I implemented an approach to the construction that will shave several hours off the construction.  Given that all of the construction is reverse-engineered based on examining the painted originals with their hidden and obscured internal details and deducing the assembly regimen, I have broad latitude in recreating Gragg’s work.