Buddy Chair — Walnut
Japanese has a word for the quality an object acquires only through use — aji, literally taste or flavour. A tool handle worn smooth where the hand grips it, a bowl whose lacquer has thinned at the rim. The object is not damaged. It has become specific to the person who used it, and that is understood as an improvement.
A dining chair earns aji faster than anything else in a house. It is the piece of furniture you are physically in contact with most: pulled out and pushed in twice a day, gripped by the top of the back, leaned into, sat on by people who do not treat it carefully. Walnut takes that well. It is warm to the hand from the first day, and over years the contact points — the crown of the back, the front edge of the seat — settle into a deeper, softer tone than the rest. A set of six will not age identically, and that is the point.
The form is bent rather than cut. The back is moulded plywood, curved to wrap around you instead of standing flat behind you, meeting a seat dished to the shape of a person. Look at the cut edge of the shell and the laminations read as a fine dark stripe — the construction is simply left visible, the same way the dowels in the solid walnut legs are shown rather than filled over. You can see how the chair is held together, which is a reasonable proxy for how it was built.
In walnut the figure runs across the bend, and the curve stretches it slightly, so the grain gathers light along the fold and drops away into the shadow underneath. Against a pale table it draws the eye; against a dark one it disappears into the set.
Two practical things. It weighs twenty-two pounds — light enough to move one-handed, which matters in a room that has to change use through the day. And the whole chair stops at thirty inches, low enough to push fully under a table so six of them leave a clean sightline rather than a row of vertical objects.
Be clear about the backrest: at twelve inches it supports the lower back, not the shoulders. That is correct for dining, conversation and a couple of hours at a table, and it is not a chair for an eight-hour working day.
Ships fully assembled. BIFMA rated for commercial traffic, which at home simply means built well past what a dining room will ask of it.
Specifications
- Overall: 22"W × 20"D × 30"H (56 × 51 × 76 cm)
- Seat: 19"W × 16"D × 19"H (48 × 41 × 48 cm)
- Back: 22"W × 1"D × 12"H (56 × 1 × 30 cm)
- Leg height: 18" (46 cm)
- Weight: 22 lbs (10 kg)
- Moulded plywood back, curved wood seat
- Solid wood legs with expressed dowel detailing
- Walnut finish
- For indoor use, residential and commercial
- BIFMA rated for high-traffic commercial environments
- Ships fully assembled
- 5-year warranty
Care
Clean with a slightly damp, soft cloth. For dirt and fingerprints use a quality cleaner made for wood furniture, then wipe completely dry, following the direction of the grain. Keep out of prolonged direct sunlight: walnut lightens under UV, and a chair that always sits in the same patch of window will drift paler than the rest of the set. Rotate the chairs around the table once a year if the room has strong light.
