Furniture Design-Roll out the barrel

I mentioned a chair made from a barrel in one of my earlier posts, well here is the design in a little more detail.

The idea behind the design was to come up with a different way to use old beer/wine barrels in a bar setting where space was a priority. Here in Taiwan, seeing these barrels made into tables is quite common, and I felt that I didn’t want to repeat an existing design.

So I took the barrel and cut it in half, not a straight cut, but a stepped cut, this gives me a chair shape that includes the seat area and the backrest. All with one cut, on one barrel, giving me two chairs! So the basic design is quick, simple and efficient. To finish the chair a single disk of wood can be used, the disk can have the half of the edge cut off of it and be slotted into the barrel to make the seat, while the off-cut can be fixed to the top of the backrest. Finish the chair with a round-buttoned cushion.

The added benefit of this design is that for storage or alternative use, two chairs can be put back together like the original barrel to save space, or to be used as a barstool with the seat/backrest lip becoming the footrest of the barstool.

So one barrel equals two chairs, easy storage and one barstool.