THE CHAIR

THE CHAIR

Research projects are amazing. They are opportunities to look up almost anything you want, making connections between apparently unrelated things. I chose a chair as quickly as possible, and did not change my mind (otherwise would have taken ages choosing one.) 

Having selected a 'throne back wicker chair', It belongs in a friends house and one of his flat mates found in a skip. Slightly damaged, with illusive history it made it interesting to complete the task.

Here is an attempt at explaining  my research method, the brown paper knows. 

There was no point scanning it all in and digitally piecing it back together. It would not have made any sense. None the less I must show it exists even if it is a draft. 

Ill re-work its contents into something that is clear with the next post. 

Wicker chairs are made from wicker. So is the 'Wicker Man', pagan festivities/culture, druidic culture, Anglo-Saxon and norse mythology, MYTHOLOGY (general), the Legend of 'Wan Hoo' : According to a Ming Dynasty urban legend, a Chinese gentleman called Wan Hoo who thought it would be a shame not to take advantage of China's advanced firework technology, had the superb idea to ask 47 servants to attach 47 rockets around his wicker chair and light them all. They ran for cover......and rockets exploded. The explosion was huge and when the  servants returned to the site, Wan Hoo was nowhere to be seen, nor was his wicker chair. He was thought to be the real first astronaught, (Although he may have been vaporized by the impact of the explosion along with his chair).

Then finding a way to bring this digression back to the subject in question. Its like 'word association- snap'.

But longer and with more pictures.

The wicker is made from a plant called 'Rattan'; 

Wicker chairs are mainly assembled 

by weaving: 

To weave you cross over the warp and the weft of a material, this lead me to word pairing, hence Stalactite and Stalagmite, and they are produced in caves, cave dwellers are FOUND in caves, (the connection here is found in this link section titled druid letter.) 

Those berries are rattan berries: their sap is dark red and known as 'dragons blood'. (Lots of dragons in Chinese folklore, bringing us to China and Mythology) The sap has medicinal qualities used in certain traditions (relating to Mythology or Cults, you can take either route) and traditionally 'Dragons Blood' used to dye violins, and so on....

Just always finding something to relate back to the questions we had to answer. Only thing is that an designer/time when this chair was produced/conceived can not be located. Hence digressions to substitute. See next post.