This stunning Cocoda Chair, Special Edition was designed by master furniture craftsman Shigeki Matsuoka. It is produced by Matsuoka's company, Studio Toda (and is an alternate take on their "standard," symmetrical Cocoda Chair).

Aesthetically it takes a lot of risks, from the asymmetry to the visible splines to the X-rails, but I think the piece works beautifully as a whole. The sweeping armrest/seatback/table surface has been meticulously shaped by hand, with a sensitivity that surpasses the mechanical perfection of a 5-axis CNC machine.

Below is some (machine-translated) background info on Matsuoka's process.

"When I first started training as a furniture maker, I decided to sketch 10 ideas every day. With the knowledge and experience I've acquired over the years, I've become more interested in quality than quantity. The number of daily sketches has decreased, but I continue to do so every day, and have been for 20 years; it has become a normal activity, like eating food."

"Only a small portion of those sketches are made into [construction] drawings, some are made as prototypes, and some are actually made into products. So I sketch daily, work on the drawings several times a week, and makes several prototypes a month, but only a few products are produced each year."

"This special edition of the Cocoda Chair in particular presents a high hurdle. Since it is advertised as a flagship product, it is a stage where I must deliver my current best performance as a furniture craftsman, designer, and representative of Studio KOMA. It is also a ring where I compete against my past self. No matter how many prototypes we make, they always fail to surpass the previous one. Experience and skills improve with each passing year or two, but other factors seem to have a big impact. It's a matter of timing, a balance between passion, skill, and experience."

"This is a chair that I am constantly making while searching for the moment when the hour, minute, and second hands of a clock line up perfectly at 0:00."

One thing this chair was not designed for, was ease of manufacture. In the build video below, you can see the insane amount of labor Studio Toda's craftsmen and craftswomen put into making one:

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How about that person's drawknife skills!

Available in Cherry or Walnut, the chairs are made to order. The price is ¥562,100 (USD $3,702) and the lead time is five months.