David Haig’s home and workshop are located in beautiful Cable Bay, where a natural boulder bank links from the mainland across to Pepin Island, with a tidal estuary on one side and a deep bay facing the open sea on the other.

It was named in 1876 when it became the termination point of a cable stretching 1150 miles along the seabed from Sydney - the first trans-Tasman sea telegraph service. Today, there are few signs of the old cable station, and the area remains a tranquil location 20 kms from the city of Nelson.

David built his first workshop in 1987 at the bottom of his garden, right next to the estuary. In 2002 he built another similar sized workshop where he keeps the biggest machinery, stores timber, does the steam bending and finishes and crates up his completed work. The chairs are all constructed in the first workshop, using a mixture of modern woodworking machinery and traditional hand tools.

From the milling of the tree to the final coat of oil, David, at times with one assistant, has built every rocking chair.