Building Willow Chairs, October 2002 -- Day Two
| This is the morning of the second day, when the back hoops for my chair are in place. The first piece I bent (which forms the lowest hoop) was just perfect: height, bend, everything. Then I put on the second piece, and it broke. So I took it off and started putting on a second second piece, which broke. When we pulled that off, my perfect first piece was broken as well. The instructor ended up putting on the first two hoops, because I was about to lose it. (I think that quite a lot of the chairs had back hoops that were started by the teacher.) |  |
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To form the seat, you bend willow to form a seat that is comfortable to you. The way you built the frame dictates the lean and depth of the seat, but you can make some adjustments during this phase, too. By this time, I had already adjusted the back slats the way I wanted them. It's possible to do some neat designs at this point, but I wanted to keep mine pretty simple. Think I should have left the branches sticking up like that? |
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| Here are Cathe's and my chairs, side by side. Mine is on the right. I wanted a lower back than she did, because I thought it would look better in my rather small house. Actually, when we sit in them, the backs look proportionally the same, since Cathe is a few inches taller than I am. |  |
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We didn't actually realize at first that the chairs couldn't sit outside in the elements. If you think about it, though, the classic use for a willow chair was to sit on a covered porch. I was worried that I'd have to leave mine up on Lopez, but as I started to work on it, I envisioned it in my house. We found a great future spot for Cathe's at the house she and Dink are building in Port Townsend. |
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| I'm thinking of making a thin cushion for the seat. It has to be thin because the chair is completely customized for me, and if I raise myself up on a pillow while sitting in it, it feels weird. |  |
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Over six months or so, it should turn a dark, maroon-ish brown. Query: How does one convince Edgar that the chair is somehow different from the pieces of wood he is allowed to chew on? |
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last modified: October 19, 2002