イギリス カントリー・ファニチャー「ウインザーチェアー」の形態分析研究 その1

Abstract

In 1991,I had an opportunity to visit England to study English Furniture. I stayed for a weeks in London. About ten years ago, I studied the English Windsor chair and actually made one with one of my students. Until then, I had made only a few chairs of a similar style. Making them was very difficult, because I had only a few Japanese wood crafts manuals, and very few books about English Country Furniture were available in Japan. But we could manage to make a few of them. When I finally got the book 'English Vernacular Furniture' by CHRISTOPHER GILBERT, I thought my work would become more successful. Two years after that, I went to England again, I visited High Wycombe. Then I found two books : 'The English WINDSOR CHAIR' and 'Jack Hill's COUNTRY CHAIR MAKING'. After that, I studied about 'The English WINDSOR CHAIR' and made a bow back Windsor chair with my students. Last year, I decided to write about this subject. This is the first report, written to introduce 'The English WINDSOR CHAIR' by Thomas Crispin and 'COUNTRY CHAIR MAKING' by Jack Hill to Japanese readers and I report on my previous works about the English Windsor chair. Next year, I plan to write an analytic study of English Windsor chair styles. Only a few decades after the end of World War II, it is said that we Japanese got a tremendous economic growth, in comparison with the cultural growth. We Japanese should learn more from other countries' traditional cultures as well as our own. The English Windsor chair is, in my opinion, one of the best basic examples to be used in the teaching of modern design.