Yellow Diva unveils its first outdoor chair. The gracefully proportioned BC1 takes the staves from a traditional oak wine barrel and refashions them to create an all-weather outdoor piece.

Yellow Diva unveils its first outdoor chair. The gracefully proportioned BC1 takes the staves from a traditional oak wine barrel and refashions them to create an all-weather outdoor piece.

Oak barrels, used typically for just five or six years by the wineries, more often than not find themselves unceremoniously sawn in half to be sold at garden centres as planters.

Designer David Walley immediately saw the advantage in employing timber that had already been seasoned and steam bent. The charred oak staves are separated, cleaned and sanded before being re-laid to create a concave curvilinear seat and given a UV-stable coating. The supporting mild steel tubular frame structure is zincplated and will weather subtly with exposure to the elements. The frame is set intorouted channels in the staves and tube ends are finished with chunky domed stops.

The BC1 chair achieves a pleasing marriage between the familiar hand-crafted timber staves and the machine aesthetic of the frame.