This chair addresses the frequently asked but rarely answered question – how far does red wine soak into the white oak barrel staves?  The answer is – pretty far. 

The idea for this chair started with the repair of a friend’s damaged chair.  I had the honor of recreating the front leg for one of Hans Wegner’s “Papa Bear” chairs that had been damaged during shipping.  The front of the frame was shattered, and the front leg was missing.  As I repaired that chair the lines caught my imagination.  At some point, I was gifted wine barrel oak staves.  They’d been kicking around the shop for years since I really had no plans for them.  However, once I saw the Papa Bear chair, I envisioned a chair using barrel staves for all the structural members.  The design came together quickly but building it was very challenging since there is almost no straight lines to work from. 

A barrel stave goes through some interesting changes during its life.  While the oak is still wet, the staves are carved into the desired shape.  Then, the green barrel staves are heated by a fire burning inside the circle of staves as the iron rings are hammered into position to force the barrel into shape.  That results in a crackly surface on the inside of the stave and compression of the oak where rings are pounded in place on the outside of the stave.  You can see change in the grain due to compression on the outside of the staves and you can see the cracks on the inside of the stave.  I think the impact of the stave’s previous life gives this new chair an aged, lived-in appearance.

The grooves seen in several of the staves are the grooves cut to hold the barrel heads in place once all the iron rings are pounded into position.  I left them to remind the sitter from where the chair evolved.  The seat is Danish cord which provides both comfort and keeps the weight of the chair down.  After sanding all surfaces to 220 grit, the wooden pieces of the chair were finished with multiple coats of a tung oil/varnish/turpentine blend followed by a coat of wax. 

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