One of the really important tasks we commit a lot of time to in my firm is design and creative development. Sometimes this means lots of coffee (or wine!! haha), group meetings and stacks of paper and pen to capture our ideas!
It’s never easy but it is a key aspect of creating original rooms and furniture for them. Some pieces come to you easily while others require a lot of thinking and refinement. But it’s this process that makes a hint of an idea, rolling around in your brain, really come alive and eventually become a real piece of furniture for a real person’s life.
You will see from the sketches below that the idea for the Stephanie Chair (from our Jane by Jane Lockhart Collection) began with the idea that we really wanted a small tub chair. I feel this is the type of chair that is great for small spaces whether a clean modern style or a more transitional/traditional one. It works so well in a living room or TV-watching room.
As the design of this chair developed, the arms were tapered and refined further so that they would appear more subtle. It was also widened slightly so that it became more open and welcoming to encourage both men and women to ‘take a seat!’.
The drawing and ultimate refinement of a piece of furniture on paper leads to more productive prototypes. Once built as a prototype, each piece is “sat on”, measured, and sat on again, to see how comfortable it is and if the proportions work. I can tell you, with the Jane Line, we did a lot of prototype construction to really get the shapes right and the comfort perfect! Dominic and Angelo, our furniture builders, are excellent and have been very patient with us!
Design development is about taking a concept and moving it forward to become something real and meaningful. It’s this part of furniture making that most people forget and don’t realize that art and science must be combined successfully to make a great chair! This matters to me, and hopefully, once you try the comfort of the Stephanie Chair, it will matter to you too!
