CIO COLLECTION
A MASTERPIECE REINVENTED
UNCANNY COMFORT FOR A WOODEN CHAIR
Our Cio® collection reflects much of what I learned by making ladder-back chairs for decades. My designs have evolved over the years until a point where making improvements meant a total re-think of how chairs work to support the overall body, shape, and form, thus, a new application was found from what was learned over the years.
It’s called Cio® (chee-o, Latin meaning revitalized or renewed). The overall effect of this chair uses your body’s soft areas for support eliminating the need for padding. Until you actually sit in a Cio® you won’t believe how wonderful a solid wooden chair can feel. For longer-term seating, these formed wooden seats remain more comfortable than padding because of the freedom of movement.
To incorporate new ideas into an old form, I discovered a trick. Needing the strongest joinery possible for the point of most stress; where the seat and rear legs meet, this took me back some 3000 years for the answer; linen composite. First used by Alexander the Great as body armor for his soldiers, linen composite has found itself a modern alternative. It is used in carbon fiber and fiberglass for today’s modern manufacturing of boats, skis, car bodies, and even aircraft parts.
2022 Innovation Design Award Winner
On September 22, 2022 Brian Boggs was honored by the International Society of Furniture Designers at their annual INNOVATION + DESIGN Competition where he received 1st place in the Professional Dining Room category for his Crescent Table as well as Best in Show for his Cio Arm Chair. With these achievements, Brian’s Cio Arm Chair design moves forward as a finalist to receive the ISFD Pinnacle Award.
The International Society of Furniture Designers (ISFD) is an organization dedicated to excellence, innovation, and originality in the practice of furniture design and serves as the unified voice of the furniture design community. The Pinnacle Awards were created in April 1995 by the ISFD board of directors to promote quality design and encourage the recognition of furniture designers who exemplify the ISFD’s values within the home furnishings industry.
Each year the ISFD sponsors the INNOVATION + DESIGN Competition, a juried competition designed to celebrate ingenuity among professional designers and emerging students who are pursuing a career in the custom wood and related home furnishings industries. The competition’s panel of judges offers a combined 210+ years of home furnishings experience covering upholstery and case good furniture design, interior design, engineering, product development, and product manufacturing.
CIO Ladderback Dining Chairs wins a 2019 GOOD DESIGN™ Award
Beauty combines with Cio Modern Dining Chairs. This reimagined Appalachian ladderback embraces contemporary and timeless aesthetics. With my feet in history and my eyes on the future, I created a piece of art that fits seamlessly into a modern furniture landscape. This transitional design may be inserted into a spectrum of home designs from traditional to contemporary – even mid-century modern!
Sculpted Fanback Arm Chair wins a 2017 GOOD DESIGN™Award
Originally designed by Brian Boggs in 1997, the Sculpted Fanback chair waited almost seventeen years to go into full production. The evolution of our joinery and production systems allowed for its rebirth in this improved form. The pinnacle of craftsmanship and ergonomic design. The design of the chair uses some tricky engineering to produce comfort, flexibility, and elegance setting this chair above the rest.
What is GOOD DESIGN™ Award
The GOOD DESIGN™ Award is the oldest and the world’s most recognized program for design excellence worldwide. It is awarded by the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. They received a record number of submissions this year from over 47 countries and awarded over 900 product designs and graphics. We’re honored to be one of them!
NEW VERSATILE TECHNIQUE
In our Cio® chairs, this super strong fibrous composite made from retted Belgian flax bark and natural tree resin, binds the elements of the seat together in ways not possible with just wood. Because of the freedom in which this ancient technology allows us to manipulate fiber, we can maximize the beauty of wood into a perfectly ergonomic form with a fraction of the weight of most traditional wooden seated chairs.
LADDERBACK CIO
Unlike my traditional ladder-back chairs, we are now able to provide the most elegant comfort. Because we bend the back slats in two orientations so that the curves across and down allow the flow to seamlessly support your spine perfectly.
As the curve of the slats meets the legs in a curved and taper locking joint no matter how you sit in these chairs you will be met with perfect harmony. The strength that the unique taper-locking joinery ensures is an ergonomic beauty that will also be around for generations to come
A LADDERBACK FOR MODERN TIMES
Brian Boggs renews the ladderback chair for the modern era.
Transitional Design
With ties to the early American ladderback design, this update integrates contemporary and modern design elements to fit into transitional, traditional or modern décor schemes.
Linen
While linen’s roots hold a respectable place in history, linen composite earns attention in modern manufacturing replacing carbon fiber and fiberglass as a green alternative in the boating, automotive, and airline industries.
Ergonomics
The whole chair follows your form from the top of the back to the front of the seat. Our specially designed process bends the slats in two planes, yielding a slat that fits the sitter’s back with perfection.
Linsit
A combination of wood veneers and linen composite creates a super strong and flexible seat shell that bridges the hickory side rails. The fusion of veneers and linen composite work together to form a dimensionally stable seat that will never crack.
Strength & Stability
The combination of veneers and linen composite not only provide great strength, they work together to form a dimensionally stable seat that will never crack and allow a lot more design freedom than traditional designs do. Combined with the joints, this approach provides enough strength to forgo bracing under the seat and allow the design to flow as naturally as the tree.
Durable Joints
Focusing on the stress concentration at the seat to rear leg joint, a hickory rail inside the seat provides two nearly unbreakable tenons. To ensure that the joints last for centuries, the grain is oriented in the hickory rail so that the medullary rays are vertical, minimizing the stress from wood movement. Each tenon and mortise is tapered from base to tip to keep the glue in place during assembly and self-clamp to ensure the strongest bond possible.
I have had a lower back chronic pain condition w/40% of the L4 L5 disk removed for over 20 years. Sitting on soft surfaces such as upholstered furniture increases the pain. I always try to find a hard surface to sit on wherever I might be. I’ve been looking for years to find a wooden chair that supported my lower and upper back and was comfortable enough to sit in it for extended periods of time. I spent many hours searching furniture stores and the internet trying to find the answer. I invested in two wooden chairs that simply were not comfortable and eventually I gave them away. In one of my many internet searches I came across Brian Boggs’ web site. I’m happy to say that Brian Boggs’ chair has worked for me. Brian really understands chairs and has spent many years perfecting them. Thanks Brian for creating a beautiful chair that this chronic pain sufferer can sit in comfortably and will enjoy for a lifetime.
Phyllis Gruver
Handmade in the USA since 1982
