Songs from the Wood

Maxine Naylor

A collection of hybrid forms exploring wood and seating typologies, Seats utilize industrial plywood, backs natural willow or solid wood. Seats are architectural. Backs have diverse identities referencing materiality and vernacular culture.

The unorthodox seat/back relationship references the Windsor Chair. This chair was classified as a stool because of its construction, which places the back on top of the seat rather than an integral extension of the back legs: (the historically accepted definition of a chair). It exploited this construction economically. At the time ‘chairs’ were taxed and ‘stools’ were not. The Windsor ‘chair’ has since been extensively re-produced to the extent that it is now ‘invisible’ as are many vernacular chairs. Naylor’s study conceptually re-visualises this formal relationship.