Chord Chair is a minimalist dining chair created by London-based designer Arun Chalotra. The name carries its own quiet argument. A chord, in geometry, is a straight line connecting two points on a curve – and the Chord Chair is built around exactly that tension, between the rectilinear and the circular, between structural logic and organic form. The result is a piece that frames the collision of those two geometries as its central subject.

Chalotra constructs the chair from locally sourced English sweet chestnut, a material with deep roots in British vernacular craft but relatively rare in contemporary furniture production. Sweet chestnut shares visual kinship with oak – open-grained, warm in tone – yet carries a finer, more even texture that rewards the turning and steam bending techniques used here. The seat is carved from solid material, its natural honey tone left exposed, creating a deliberate contrast against the dark-stained frame that surrounds it. The effect reads almost like a framed canvas: the raw wood grain as subject, the blackened structure as mount.

That circular seat sits within a cylindrical collar, itself threaded onto four vertical legs connected by curved horizontal stretchers at multiple heights. Repetition is the governing formal strategy – the same curved rail appears at the backrest, at the armrest, at the seat ring, and again near the floor. Rather than varying the element for visual interest, Chalotra holds it constant, letting accumulation do the work. It is a method with clear resonance in Japanese craft traditions, where structural rhythm communicates care and intentionality without ornamentation. The approach also recalls the early Shaker principle that functional repetition is its own form of beauty.