An Ode to the Chair
The chair. The average person doesn’t really think about it that often; it is simply an object that exists in our dining rooms, living rooms, kitchens, offices. It is an item of utility, there to serve a functional purpose.
We live our lives in chairs.
We do our work from office chairs, we eat our meals sitting on dining chairs, we read books or watch television curled into armchairs. We drink cocktails on bar stools or sitting in lawn chairs in the backyard. We nurse our babies from rocking chairs. We use them to rest, to work, to have fun, to study. Chairs are one of the most important and versatile objects, living in everyone’s home, and I think that they deserve more attention for the way that they serve us.
Image: Architectural Digest
Chairs that came out of the Bauhaus movement perfectly encapsulate the best of what furniture has to offer, because the ethos of the movement specifically designates that function is prioritized above all else. This is why these chairs are the most comfortable, useful, and famous pieces of furniture in history;
they are designed with the sitter in mind, and not the aesthetic. Of course, there is an innate aesthetic brilliance in good design, so the chairs are all beautiful anyway.
I will confess that I probably care more about chairs than most. The proof of this lives on the inside of my left bicep, where an outline of Eero Saarinen’s Tulip Chair is tattooed. I had a friend in college who loved chairs so much that he designed and built his own chair as part of his senior project. Much of my love and respect for chairs came from him. It also came from learning about the artistic movements behind these chairs, learning to truly appreciate how they came to be, and from simply existing around them.
I had the privilege of attending a college that had a great collection of Bauhaus and mid-century modern furniture. There were Wassily chairs in the library, and the Saarinen-themed common room of my dormitory was furnished with a conversation pit and a vast assortment of Tulip and Womb chairs. One year, someone broke one of the tulip tables that we all sat and did our work at, and I mourned.
Image: Georgia O’ Keeffe vía Todd Webb
There was something idyllic about going to Art History class, held in a dark lecture hall, where I sat in a dark red velvet fold out chair in a long row of identical fold out chairs, listening to a lecture on the Bauhaus concept of function over form and looking at pictures of chairs, lamps, and coffee pots. Afterwards, I would walk out into the bright sunshine of campus, blinking and shielding my eyes against the light, and shuffle on back to my dorm, where I would print out the reading for my next class and settle into the bright orange Womb chair in the dorm lounge armed with my water bottle and a pink highlighter. It felt like I truly got it, really understood the beauty I was surrounded by. Sit and read in a bright orange Womb chair for an hour, and you too will understand my utter love it.
Image: @thecarolinelin
The Womb Chair is, in my opinion, the perfect lounge chair. It hugs your back in the most comfortable way, and the way that the arm rests are a part of the shell of the chair means that they feel completely natural (plus, they are wide enough to act as a small table). In the way that this chair is the perfect lounge chair, so the Tulip Chair is the perfect dining chair, and the Wassily Chair is the perfect multi-use, utility chair.
Of course, most of us do not own Wassily chairs, or Brno chairs, or Barcelona chairs. I am writing this article from a cheap swivel chair that has seen much better days. Still, the chairs in which we live our lives serve their purpose for us, so I encourage you to think about that next time you sit down. I am grateful for all of the chairs in my life.