Some friends gave me free reign to create two matching rocking chairs–given some specific dimensions.

I’d been hankering to work with complete slabs of wood ever since the wood slab light fixture.  I found a great, concave slab of cottonwood that I thought would be awesome as chair backs. Then the vision just developed from there.

The chairs were just finished with oil to keep their character as natural as possible. The thought that guided my work was to have the feeling of “being hugged by a tree”, so I left as much raw edge on the wood as possible.

The original concave slab that kicked off the vision

One of the concave chair backs sanded smooth

The slices of cottonwood for the rest of the chairs.

Fitting some of the pieces

Shaped, sanded, and ready to assemble!

Prepping for joinery/fastening.

Getting the rockers just right was key.

Finishing touches

Ready to be oiled

First chair completely assembled and ready for oil

Chair 1 getting oil, chair 2 still under assembly.

Both chairs completed.

Ready to ROCK!

The perfect imperfections of this tree are my favorite parts.

Really nice grain detail and live edge on this one.

My #2 helper hard at work!