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One of the parts of my next armchair that I’ve struggled with is the shape of the armbow. On my most recent chair, I used a maple arm that was cold-bend hardwood. It’s a sleek look, but I decided that it was too complex for “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”

So I decided to go back to the first stick chairs I built in 2003 and use a three-piece armbow. This form of arm is chunkier, but you don’t need to bend anything, and it can be really strong if you orient the grain so it follows the curve of the arm.

The armbow is 7/8” thick and 2” wide for the most part. Then it swells to 2-3/8” at the hands. Well, swells isn’t the right word. I began expanding the radius of the outside of the arm along the front 4”. How did I do this? French curves.

Then I used a second french curve to make the front edge of the armbow.

This was not all one flash of inspiration. This was four iterations. Draw it on paper. Cut it out in 5mm underlayment plywood. Stare at it until I hate it. Repeat.

I kept doing this until I didn’t hate it.

Then I cut out the arms in some air-dried locust (thanks Brendan!).

Tomorrow it’s back to working on the seat.

— Christopher Schwarz

Most of my commission work is surprisingly straightforward. People see something on my personal website (christophermschwarz.com) and say: Hey, I’d like you to build that again.

I build it. And I ship it to them.

Sometimes I get a request for something a little unusual. For example, this summer I’m working out the details of a three-tiered campaign chest. And I have a request for some Roorkhee ottomans. But those pieces are based firmly on my existing work.

This year, however, I got a very unusual order for a chair. It went something like this: Build me a chair, but I want it to advance your work as a designer. He gave me some thoughts on the woods he preferred and what he liked about my existing chair designs, but that was it.

I decided to use this opportunity to work out the details of an armchair for “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” I took an undercarriage design I’ve been working on for a couple years and refined it some more. Then I made the undercarriage parallel to the floor (instead of the seat), a detail I swiped from Chris Williams’s chairs. I shortened the armbow. Added some spindles. And did a major reshape of the crest rail (sometimes called a “comb”).

The chair looks good. It sits even better. But it’s not the armchair for “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” During construction of this chair, I devised a number of ways I could simplify this design so it would be much easier to build. And ease of building is one of the most important principles in the book.

So I am incredibly grateful to this customer who gave me the huge gift of freedom. And even though I failed to produce the bullseye design for “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” this chair is an important stepping stone to that design.

Which I started working on yesterday.

— Christopher Schwarz