David Haig, Nelson, New Zealand

Signature Rocking Chair

Sycamore
This chair is built from sycamore, an English tree that is now widely grown in New Zealand. Its special characteristic is its clean white appearance, which perfectly accentuates the form of this chair. It also happens to be one of the half dozen best steam-bending woods in the world.

Joinery
The chair uses housing joints, (back legs and rockers to seat) mortise and tenons, (back-splat to seat and cresting-rail) and butt joints reinforced with biscuits, splines, gussets or dowels, (rockers to back leg, arms to back leg, arms to cresting rail and seat sections). A characteristic of many of these joints is that, while the basic fit is cut with router and jigs, they are subsequently hand-shaped to form fluid intersections, in keeping with the general flow and movement of the linking parts of the chair.

Glues
For the edge joints and the laminations, Titebond III (allipahtic resin), otherwise I use Epiglue epoxy resin.

Finish
To ensure the least possible yellowing effect on this very white wood, I use a hard-wearing clear acrylic urethane, Ameron 2K, cut back and buffed with a light wax top-coat.

Concept
I built the first version of this chair 17 years ago, as an attempt to create a rocking chair that moved away from the classic ‘chair-on-rockers’ look. I was trying to embody a fully integrated and fluid design in which the whole chair reflected the rocking motion. The earliest version was successful enough to make me keep tinkering with the design, and what I have now is the fruit of many years of careful refinement of detail, proportion and process.

Photo: Daniel Allen