Chair design

[Pete W]

This is more in the way of general musing rather than an urgent project, but I have a vague hankering for a chair design/plan/inspiration.

A lot of my computing is done of an evening, on a laptop at the dining table. There are several things wrong with this... the table is almost precisely the wrong height for extended typing, in the summer the lighting is bad on the LCD screen, in the winter there's a terrible draught on my old back. And the 'rugged' pine dining chairs are damned uncomfortable after a while.

So somewhere down the line I'd like to build a desk (for which I have plenty of ideas) and a chair to go with it, which is proving more difficult. I've surveyed the usual sites for woodworking plans and find that chairs are poorly represented (umpteen Adirondacks, more than a few Morris designs, little else). So I'm looking for ideas and inspiration instead.

Something that could perhaps double-up as a spare dining chair, ideally with a little padding in the seat, with arms preferably. Anyone have any suitable designs they particularly like? Any websites that are generally inspirational?

And does the lack of plans suggest a greater-than-usual difficulty with chair-oriented woodworking?

 

[Anonymous]

You must enter a message when posting

 

[Nick W]

For a 'course' in chair design and construction try Jeff Miller's Chairmaking & Design

 

[Pete W]

Jacob, didn't know 'captain's chair' could cover such a variety of styles; the one you posted as close to your own is what I think of as a captain's chair. Trouble is, it isn't much of an advance over our existing dining chairs.

Here's one that I like, although the back isn't really what I'm looking for:

It's from this site, one of my favourites for inspiration.

Nick, thanks for the tip; not a book I'm familiar with.