I used the Sligo chair as a pattern for the development of a series of contemporary chairs. The intention was to maintain the pattern of the original—the number and type of parts and their arrangement and configuration relative to each other—but to avoid overt Celtic imagery or overtones. I wanted to show that the patterns of vernacular furniture, with their time-tested logic to the material (wood) and economy of construction, were still relevant to making work today.

That the subsequent work might remind a viewer or user, especially someone with knowledge of Irish culture, of the original, 'old,' chair, albeit at a semi- or sub-conscious level is deliberate. I wanted to explore the paradoxical fact that identity is constructed through both continuity with the past and a conscious break from it.

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fig. 5

The first chair in the Sligo series [fig. 5] takes the elements as described earlier and enacts 'co-ordinate transformation' on them, that is, pushes and pulls them, and changes proportions but keeps the same elements in the same relation to each other. Through or exposed joinery is used: the front legs are wedge-tenoned into position, the back leg is through mortice and tenoned, and the arms dovetailed onto the backrest.