These are my first furniture designs. Built from old fir high-school bleachers I salvaged plus some used fir 2x4s from concrete forms, these went into the tea room of the Kansas City Shotokan Karate dojo. Padauk wood inlay was used in the five chairs and table top to fill the many holes and defects in the old fir wood. The chairs and table are all very tight and sturdy, even after three years of use, but the chairs are pretty uncomfortable if you try to lean back in them. By the way, that’s one of my tiled Japanese wood block prints hanging on the wall behind me.
- Tea room table 58″ x 74″
- five matching chairs
- built in benches
- completed 1998
- Fir wood mortise and tenon construction.
- Inlaid Padauk wood accents.Polyurethane finish
one of the five chairs I made for the tea room -- different inlay for each chair (photo: Al Surratt)
Greg Oliver, Carl Johnson, John Teramoto, Tsutomu Ohshima, Jon Beltram, Joe Kappes, and Mike Lyon enjoy juice at the table after the grand opening of the KC dojo