Ashgrove Dining Chair

Ash is the only one of our four timbers springy enough to bend without tearing, so the crest rail of the Ashgrove is steamed for ninety minutes and pulled around a form in one piece rather than cut from a wide blank. The result is a back that follows your spine and has continuous grain from one arm of the curve to the other — no short grain, no weak point. The seat is woven in natural paper cord over two afternoons; it takes a set to its owner within a year. Rails are draw-bored into the legs with riven oak pegs, so the chair can be knocked apart and re-pegged decades from now.