After serving a four-year apprenticeship in carpentry and joinery in his hometown of Melbourne, Australia, Bern Chandley went on to build sets and all sorts of furniture for movie studios there and in Sydney for Star Wars and other films. Pretty exciting stuff. But his career really took off when he met American chairmaker Peter Galbert, who was teaching a Windsor workshop in Australia. “Fireworks went off in my brain when I built my first Windsors,” Chandley says. “I loved the directness of it. I had to let go of the perfectionism fostered by flat work. In Windsors, if it looks right, it is right.” He’s been building Windsors that look right ever since. His recent black dining chair illustrates the hybrid nature of his designs. It brings together the wide-splayed undercarriage of vintage American Windsors, cigar-shaped legs that echo Shaker pieces, a crinoline stretcher borrowed from period English chairs, and an overall cleanness and spareness of line inspired by Mid-Century Modern work. “You’ve seen all these shapes before,” Chandley says, “just not in the same chair.” Merging them successfully is the trick. Asked how he arrives at the final design, Chandley says, “I try not to let myself get satisfied too quickly.”