“Van Gogh chair” is a type of folk chairs once made in Spain. Small diameter poplar logs were rived, shaved and assembled by hand. Shoji Hamada, a famous potter who led arts-and-crafts movement in Japan, visited Guadix, Andalucia in 1960s and was so impressed to see many of those chairs were being made by anonymous chairmakers. Tatsuaki Kuroda, a renowned woodworker and a lacquer artist, also visited Guadix in 1967 to learn about chairs after he was commissioned to design and make chairs for the Japanese Imperial Palace. Kuroda called it “Van Gogh chair” as the chair looked like Van Gogh’s famous painting.

This drawing is based on the measurements of an original Spanish chair owned by Kawai Kanjiro Memorial museum in Kyoto. A PDF file includes plans and a cutting list of each part. Step by step instruction of how to make a Van Gogh chair is not included in the PDF, but is featured in the book “Van Gogh chair” written by Masashi Kutsuwa. 

The following movie was shot in 1967 by Tatsuaki Kuroda, when he met a chairmaker at a suburb of Granada, Spain.

There is an old TV program of 1979 that featured a chair making in Guadix. Manolo Rodriguez, a chairmaker appeared in the program, is also featured in the “Van Gogh chair” book as “the last chairmaker in Guadix”.