Sometimes you see a chair and say: “Hey! Nice!” Which is what I thought when this Dancer Chair came up through Pinterest.
One of the drawbacks of a curating tool like pinterest is that the person who uses it, is not always using it as you should: They simply pin a photo from the net and you won’t have a clue as to where it comes from. Luckily Google now has a possibility to actually draw a photo in a photo search window and it comes up with a number of similar photos and that may help you to discover the provenance.
The caption at the photo learned me this chair was featured at the 14th Tenessee Master Woodworkers Show in Knoxville Tennessee, an exposition organized by the East Tenessee Woodworkers Guild.
Google pointed me to a post in Woodnews of Highland Woodworking. That article poited me to the site of Atlanta, GA, based Sabiha Mujtaba, Chrysalis Woodworks, which has an amazing number of chairs.
Strangely Google also pointed me to a Maverick Indian Export Site featuring the same chair and I must say I’m a bit confused now….
Update: See Sabiha’s comment below: The Indian export site took the photo of the chair. I’ve now deleted the link from this post as I don’t want to feature copycats here.
It looks like Google itself is pretty much confused! But it’s a great example of woodwork and craftsmanship, as well as someone’s fantasy and creativity.
Mujtaba created his chair in 2004; the Indian export site only dates back to 2009. Also, the photos are not just similar but identical. I think the foreign export is a knockoff copy.
Thank you Greg, even after looking again I see hardly any difference between the photos…
Thank you Greg for your corrective research. The photo has been copied directly and as far as I know there is no knock-off of my piece. I was flabbergasted by the revelation that a rogue ‘Maverick exports’ in India is trying to ‘sell’ my chair.
The obvious intent is of deception and/or duplication of my work…..an unfortunate price artist pay for putting our work out there…..I know of others who have experienced this.
Sabiha
Thank you for confirming the Indian site seems a rogue site. I’ve deleted the link from the post.