Hancock and Moore Cut-away chair

The Cut-Away chair that Hancock and Moore has built for me has shipped and should be at my store shortly. I have been wanting one of these for some time, as it shows the construction rather than me just talking about it. Even though my store is quite small and space is precious, I will keep it where folks can see it when they walk in the store. Being told something is one thing, actually being able to see it is ten times better. There are a lot of companies out there who wouldn't want to show you a cut-away...lol. Usually its only the ones doing it right that do.

If anyone in the Washington DC area has an old stationary wing chair made by Ashley, Lane, La-Z-Boy, Bernhardt, Flexsteel, Hickory Chair, Mitchell Gold, Restoration Hardware, etc and wants to dispose of it, please let me know. I will send my delivery team over to get it and then get my Sawzall out and make a cut-away of it, then compare and contrast the two here on the forum. I think you would be amazed.

This will be amazing and I'm really excited as well. If no one has one to sacrifice in your area in the next two weeks, I will buy you one off Craigslist. I've always been curious! I especially want to see an Ashley one cut in half.

Here we go, arrived early this morning and I wasted no time getting this out of the box and into the store, where it will be on display for all of you to come by and check it out. I just love this - it gives me a visual tool to show folks the actual build vs just a bunch of words in describing the difference in a premium made piece of upholstery. One thing I know for a fact is that customers will often be willing to spend more for quality, but you have to be able to show them what they are buying and this allows me to do just that. My thanks to Hancock and Moore for providing this to me free of charge, it was a nice gesture and I know it cost well over a thousand dollars to build and ship this. This is exactly like the Hancock and Moore you buy for your own home, its not a 'ringer' or one done up over and beyond the regular production pieces. The only exception would be the bare maple is clear-coated with a finish on my cut-away and you would not have that on a fully covered piece> Other than that this is how they are made, including the sanded wood frame underneath.

I took several photos and have put labels on the piece once in my store:

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So let's have some fun and look at the details! I can only post (5) photos per entry, so scroll down for more.

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This is the H&M 5962 Baron Wing Chair done in Portfolio Claret, a GR 2 leather, with Mahogany Distress finish and "A" nail trim, with standard cushion cores. To start with, the first thing that jumps right out is the wood used in this piece. Today, the vast majority of furniture, some 90%, is made of plywood, which is often called 'engineered hardwoods' in sales literature or 'laminated hardwoods'. This is the real deal here - SOLID maple. Not made of plys and formaldehyde glues, this is old school solid wood. Yes, its more expensive and its also rock solid, there is no flex in the frame. A solid chair that doesn't flex means no deterioration from use, resulting in a piece that lasts for generations. This is also one of the reasons a Hancock and Moore is more expensive. Quality materials are not inexpensive.

You will notice too that the hardwood is sanded, its not left raw, this allows for a cleaner and more finished lay of the cover on the frame. and if you look closely you will see down joints to hold pieces together, with a no-sag back and true 8-way hand-tied knotted construction. Corners are reinforced to make sure they stay together over time. Also, everyone who worked on this piece has signed their name to it, and this tag comes with every H&M piece.

Some more photos...

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One of the things to take note of is that each of the (8) strings that ties to the individual coil is knotted. While that may seem trivial, its really not. Most '8-way' construction builds they loop the string there, instead of stopping and knotting - its much, much faster to do it that way. However the knot insure that if one string should break, the other (7) will hold tight and you'll never feel the difference. In a 'looped' build where the string is not knotted, it unravels like dominos falling on the whole tie through the chair and the springs will expand.

Also notice the 'edge bar' on the outside of the coil springs, that's an extra support piece much like a firm edge on a mattress, to give a little more buttressing on the sides so the cushion doesn't sink into the gag by the arms, You will never experience that sink on a Hancock and Moore piece.

I love the complex joinery at the wings on the wood, that's real frame craftsmanship very old-school. Attention to detail.

Still more photos.

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Look at how the leg on this is integrated as a structural frame member on this chair. In most chairs, its simply shoved up there and anchored with two wood screws - here its part of the chassis. This is how you want your legs attached to the frame. There is a recess cut-away for the upholstery to channel in the leg, but that is solid to the joint.

Every piece of H&M is padded as well, the cover doesn't to up against bare wood and metal, there is always underlying pad. Some is not shown for the cutaway, but you can tell for yourself when you press in from the side of a panel. One thing that is not easily visible on the cutaway photos are the steel band reinforcements under the webbing, that's a key component that prevents sag as the chair ages - if you look closely you can make out the shadows of the steel bands.

Hope you enjoy the photos of the cut-away! Now I need to show a wing chair that's not made as well and will wait for a donor chair to take apart and document. For the time being, there is this old thread you can read and see photos where I took a made-in-China bench apart prior to disposing of it - I think you will be shocked at the difference:

http://www.myfurnitureforum.com/show...-take-it-apart

Sticking the thread to the top

The detail and quality is really awesome to see, especially with the wood frame you can see the difference.

I'm going to find another 'mainstream' brand chair to cut up and evaluate. What brand do you folks want to see dis-assembled? Here's a Pottery Barn Chair I don't think he can even get $ 75 for....but everyone pretty much knows that Pottery Barn is..well...you know. Anything else? If you come across one in Northern Virginia that's not too pricey you want to see evaluated with a Sawzall, let me know.

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/d...635450653.html

I think the brands I see people ask about most are like the Pottery Barn / Arhaus / Crate & Barrel stuff. It would be interesting to compare to La-z-boy and Ashley as well just to see how bad it is.

Oh that would be a good one Duane.

I second that, Danw99! I have no doubt the Crate & Barrel/West Elm stuff will be atrocious.

This is awesome.

The H & M chair is really beautiful. The construction looks like a piece of art.

Unstick this post

It would be interesting to see a cutaway with the new construction methods and compare that to a cut away from something like Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware. Hopefully it would still be better in the H&M piece. But this piece they made for you showed really beautiful construction. I hope you keep it somewhere. It should be in a furniture museum somewhere demonstrating how construction methods in furniture have changed and evolved over time.

If you go back to this post, you can see several photos of builds. http://www.myfurnitureforum.com/show...re-s-Factories

The Cut-away chair went in the dumpster recently. When my store gets full, we had moved it many times to the warehouse to make way for saleable items (my store is only 5K SF). One one of those moves, it came off the back of the truck since its unbalanced, and sheared the legs off - and the springs had become slightly surface rusted over the years - I decided to toss it.

Duane,

I suppose it would also have been inappropriate to keep this Barron mock-up in your store given your post a week or so before the one linked below about ‘Changes at Hancock and Moore’ where you indicated H&M was eliminating the solid maple or ash construction in favor of plywood. Even if it weren’t damaged, it no longer represents the way the furniture is made. I think that’s worth mentioning too.

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Originally Posted by drcollie

If you go back to this post, you can see several photos of builds. http://www.myfurnitureforum.com/show...re-s-Factories

The Cut-away chair went in the dumpster recently. When my store gets full, we had moved it many times to the warehouse to make way for saleable items (my store is only 5K SF). One one of those moves, it came off the back of the truck since its unbalanced, and sheared the legs off - and the springs had become slightly surface rusted over the years - I decided to toss it.

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Fact of the matter is when you only have a 5,000 s.f. showroom, every foot is valuable and that poor chair got moved in and out so many times, we basically wore it out. It was only in the store when we were light on floor stock and needed a filler item and it spent more time in the warehouse than the showroom. I can always get another upon request, showing current build structure but it will suffer the same fate of getting moved in and out, which is why I have not requested one. Instead, we take photos on our factory trips and you can see the builds there - they are fully disclosed.

Our store is fully packed right now, which is why we have some ridiculous markdowns on discontinued floor models that have to go. Chairs that were $ 2,000 are now $ 295 just to clear space -which means we are taking a loss on them. And if they don't clear out soon will be donated to charity....we have an H&M Sectional on the way in and no where to put it.

I know this is an old thread but my husband and I visited the H & M section of Furnitureland South in High Point, NC yesterday and they had the cutout chair on display there. It's always nice to see what the inside of furniture you may contemplate buying looks like on the inside and I'm glad that certain manufacturers show them online and in person at certain stores. It definitely shows whether they are proud of the construction or not when they openly show these.

Lol….they have a slightly larger showroom than The Keeping Room.

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Originally Posted by drcollie

Lol….they have a slightly larger showroom than The Keeping Room.

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LOL, that place is HUGE!!!