Designed With Ease: Gareth Neal On Bodging

With the Great Heal's Bodging Race set to make a return, we asked former competitor Gareth Neal for his thoughts on his winning Ease Chair design.

“When I was asked to take part in the Great Heal’s Bodging Race, I approached the design with a free agenda, wanting to create a chair that felt right at the time. Having seen a bamboo sun lounger on a beach in Egypt earlier in the year, I was inspired to utilise the traditional technique of bodging to create a piece that didn’t feature a solid wood seat. In some ways an evolution of the Windsor chair."

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Bodge job: Gareth Neal (bottom left) hard at work on his Ease Chair as part of the Great Heal's Bodging Race 2015.

"I quickly adopted the classic construction of bodged furniture embracing its purity and simplicity, and within the week the design had evolved from prototype to potential product.

Working with Heal’s in-house team, I was able to refine my design to produce the Ease, a modern slung chair that celebrates honest craftsmanship through the tacit quality of material and simple jointing detailing.”

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