From March 30th to April 5th, 9 designers "went back to the furniture." They lived for a week in the Herefordshire woods and practiced the traditional woodturning craft of Bodging, where unseasoned wood is transformed into chair legs and stretcher bars using a pole-lathe, as seen in Windsor Chairs.

The nine participants were led by Gudrun Leitz and her assistant; "they all got out of the studio, away from drawing boards, computer screens and mechanised equipment into the hands-on world of the original country-chair makers working without electricity with pole lathes, steam benders and hand tools."

Designersblock will be presenting the resulting nine chairs (plus one by workshop leader Gudrun Leitz) at Bodging Milano. Participating designers include Amos Marchant, Carl Clerkin, Chris Eckersley, Dave Green, Gareth Neal, Gitta Gschwendtner, Rory Dodd, Suzanne Barnes, and William Warren. For more information on this and other Designersblock exhibits, click here.

More shots of the workshop and its products after the jump.