As a survivor of architecture school, I often miss working on scale models. It's the best way to express a design physically, and it's always a refreshing to take a break from computer work to make something by hand. Before the new year, my coworker told me about a competition held every year by Design Within Reach. It happens around New Year and fittingly uses the many pieces involved in corking a bottle of campaign. Using these pieces, and only these pieces, you're supposed to create a small chair. Looking at the shape of the cork, I decided it was best suited to being carved out and made into a small egg chair.

I used an olfa blade to start carving down the middle of the cork. It was surprisingly gummy, and I was only able to carve by pulling the pieces off with some forceps. The portion where the cork bulged out, where the cork sat outside the bottle, was perfect for the arm rests. Once I had carved all the way down to the seat I cut 2 notches both above and below the arms.

I kept carving out the center, making the chair back as thin as I dared. Then I started bending outward to open up the chair back. Once the body of the chair was made I had to figure out the base. The original egg chair sits on a single stem rising from 4 legs. Rather than that, I decided to just use the little metal cap as a base.

I'm pretty proud of the final chair, but I'm afraid it didn't win. There were several other entries that recreated the egg chair, one or two were probably better than mine. Actually there were quite a few interesting entries. Maybe next year I'll have to try my own design.