cherner chairs  

I purchased a round dinin...
I purchased a round dining table, 2 arm chairs, 2 side chairs and 4 bar stools of these re-issues and couldn't be happier with them.

ummmm
ok.

"ummmm ok"
What the hell is that supposed to mean apart from telling the world you got dropped on your head as a child?
Back to the plot - its great what the Cherner brothers are doing, I read about them in a magazine article a little while ago. How much better to spend your dough with these guys than the knock off and faking brigade.

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ummmm
ok?

These chairs are among my...
These chairs are among my favorites aesthetically. I sat in one at the local DWR recently. Ouch!

I ordered mine ...
I ordered mine upholstered on both the backs and bottoms and find them very comfortable.

Beautiful chairs. Well...
Beautiful chairs. Well made.
I convinced a friend to buy a set to replace an odd 90's Conran oddity.
The old chairs sat by the side of the road for a few days.
He doesn't like vintage. I think he now has a classic set of chairs.
And if he ever wants to change again, he will not have trouble selling them.
Yet another reason to buy quality.
Nice company to deal with. They sent samples of leather and were very
compassionate about their product. Nice to see a beautiful chair at a
reasonable price and great quality.
Absolutely my first choice if i needed a dining set.

The solving of design problems
Whitespike has brought up one of my favorite threads: different solutions to the same problem.
In 1946 the Eames had to conceed their dream of a chair made out of a single piece of plywood molded into complex curves. The reason: the sharp curve between the seat and the backrest caused the plywood to splinter and crack. The results: the DCW & LCW are sometimes dubbed the most successful failures of the modern era.
Arne Jacobsen studied the problem, even going so far as to buy an LCW and keep it in his studio to study it. By playing with materials and narrowing the waist of the chair he was able to create the Ant Chair - directly descended from Charles & Ray and later re-integrated into his other ply chairs including Series 7 and the Grand Prix. His solution was to create more flexibility by glueing in two layers of cotton/linen between the plys. The result is a sturdy chair moulded out of a single piece of ply, but with the comfort of compound curves and gentle flexibilty to the backrest. (yet strong enough for a grown man to stand on the backside)
Across the pond in the backwoods of Lawrence Massachusetts Paul Goldman was struggling to create a Nelson Associates design: The Pretzel chair by Nelson and John Pile in 1957. Unfortunately for Goldman, the owner of Plycraft, the chair was fragile, and production lasted for less than a year. Goldman saw potential in the chair and it was redesigned by Norman Cherner. Amazingly Cherner's design solved the puzzle of a single piece seat/backrest in an entirely new way. Rather than splitting the pieces, or adding a separate material, Cherner dramatically narrowed the waist to a delicate wasp-like profile. He created strength in this narrow passage by adding in additional layers of plywood to form an elegant, if stiff profile. The seat swells from 5 ply at the edge to 15 ply at the waist. The delicate narrowness is emphasized by the graceful swooping of the armrest, and the pointy tapered legs. But it is, as whitespike notes, unyeilding and fairly inflexible - unlike the Series 7 or the Eames.

Cherner and Goldman
...and then Goldman tried to take credit for Norman's design--in The 1000 Chair book it is credited to Goldman. Cherner sued him and won. I rescued six side chairs and 2 armchairs from a sad looking ebay post, refinished them, and reupholstered the seat and backs and now they comfortably sit around my Florence Knoll oval dining table. Just a note--when you compare the legs of the vintage ones vs the Cherner Chair Company's newer reissue, there is a difference. The older chairs' legs are more tapered at the base. The newer ones feel just a tad clunky in comparison to the classic. The design of the 15 ply neck is quite brilliant and the chair is very comfortable.

i would love to see your ...
i would love to see your chairs they sound really
cool and i enjoyed the article
i get tons of furniture from plycraft, and am always wondering about that company, i often wonder how plycraft and Selig ended up in the same city of Lawrence Mass and have the same stands on almost identical chairs with the exception of th arm rest plycraft leaning more to the Herman miller lounge chair and Selig flat, and of course identical ottomans,