Introduction

I own a creaky old wooden office chair that swivels, tilts,

and rolls. I bought it in a flea market more than thirty years
ago to use as a writing chair or, rather, as a typing chair, for at
that time I used a Hermes portable. My first computer was
an Osborne, followed by a succession of PCs, each more
powerful and more versatile than its predecessor. Now I write
on a Mac. The Osborne is stored in an attic cupboard, al-
though I’m not sure why I hang on to it. Valore sentimen-
tale, the Italians would say. My Osborne has a monochrome
screen the size of a postcard, uses an obscure computer lan-
guage, stores information on plastic floppies, and runs obso-
lete software. In other words, it is twenty-three pounds of
useless junk. On the other hand, my old office chair is still
usable. It’s a so-called banker’s chair, with a scooped seat,
curved arms, and a contoured back, a design that first ap-
peared in Edwardian England. You won’t find other artifacts
from that period in my home—no antimacassars or spit-
toons, no gasoliers or Victrolas—yet my banker’s chair con-
tinues to do its job.
A chair can be a living link to the past. Even the distant
4 NOW I SIT ME DOWN

past. I would feel odd wearing a Greek chiton, and I wouldn’t

know how to consult the sibyl of the oracle at Delphi, but
like Achilles and Odysseus I can sit on a klismos, the an-
cient Greek chair. The one I recently used wasn’t a precious
antique but came from JCPenney. That’s not unusual. Ours
may be a digital age, but we continue to manufacture and use
period chairs: wing chairs, rocking chairs, Windsor chairs.
There is good reason to copy the klismos—you have to
jump ahead more than two thousand years to the English cab-
riole of the eighteenth century to find a chair of equal elegance.
Other candidates might include a Louis XV armchair, the
fin de siècle Viennese café chair, and the mid-century modern
Eames chair. And there are many lesser useful chairs: club
chairs, reclining chairs, deck chairs.
Chairs are fascinating because they address both physiol-
ogy and fashion. They represent an effort to balance multiple
concerns: artistry, status, gravity, construction, and—not
least— comfort. Chairs can be whimsical or blandly practi-
cal, luxurious or simple, a frill or a necessity. My short his-
tory chronicles many changes in chair design, but unlike
communications equipment, transportation technology, and
weaponry, which have become more efficient, faster, and
deadlier over time, chairs do not necessarily get “better”;
some models persist unchanged for centuries. On the other
hand, chair design is not static. Change is caused by the avail-
ability of new materials, by new social conditions, by new
production methods, and by new uses. It is also caused by
new fashions as well as the desire for novelty, and periodi-
cally by spurts of the inventive human imagination, which is
never satisfied to leave “well enough” alone.
As chairmaking evolved from individual craftsmen, to
guilds, and finally to industrial production, the responsibility
for design shifted. Since the nineteenth century, many chairs
 INTRODUCTION 5

have been designed by architects. This was largely a result of

the Arts and Crafts movement, in which architects designed
furnishings, wallpapers, lamps, even table services, to com-
plement their interiors. Like a building, a chair combines art-
istry and function. Unlike a building, however, a chair’s fate
is at the mercy of its users. A building may turn out to be
unpopular or impractical, but once it is built we are stuck
with it— demolition is only rarely an option. A chair, on the
other hand, is different; if it is disliked it will be set aside,
manufacturers will discontinue making it, and it will soon
be forgotten. But if it garners favor, it—or rather its design—
can survive for centuries. Banker’s chairs continue to be made
today, as are bentwood café chairs, and many Danish Mod-
ern chairs. Unlike most consumer goods, chair models can
have a long life; some never go out of fashion. Or, like the
JCPenney klismos, they reappear to function just as their
original makers intended.

This book is not a conventional design history; it is as much a

chronicle of human behavior as of human artifacts. The first
chapter traces the evolution of the simplest sitting implement—
the stool—and shows how every period copies or adapts
what came before, all the way back to pharaonic Egypt. Next,
an overview of domestic furniture reminds us that there are
many kinds of chairs because there are so many different
reasons to sit. This leads to a theme that is a constant in my
story: the chair is a practical tool, but it can also be an aes-
thetic object— cherished, admired, even collected. Finally,
there is nothing natural about sitting on chairs— after all,
many societies prefer to sit on the floor. Why do we sit up on
chairs? The story of how the ancient Chinese switched from
floor-sitting to chair-sitting sheds light on this matter.
6 NOW I SIT ME DOWN

The middle portion of the book traces the story of the

chair from prehistoric times to the present day. It does not
attempt to be comprehensive but touches on the high points:
the progression of the simple side chair from a glorified stool
to the refined British cabriole chair; the golden age of sitting
furniture in Louis XV’s France; the appearance of exem-
plary folk models such as the English Windsor chair and the
American rocker; the saga of Michael Thonet, who invented
the long-lasting bentwood café chair; the advent of the
modern designer, whose work was separated—for the first
time—from actual chairmaking; the mid-century Danish
Modern movement, which combined traditional craftsman-
ship with factory production. Individuals make an appear-
ance: Thomas Chippendale, author of influential furniture
handbooks; the ébéniste Jean-François Oeben, who raised
furniture-making to a fi ne art; the first designers, such as the
turn-of-the-century Viennese architect Josef Hoffmann; the
Bauhaus maven Marcel Breuer; Charles and Ray Eames, who
pioneered chairs in new materials; and the Danish master
Hans Wegner. These individuals are a reminder that chairs
often involve invention as well as artistry, and that new solu-
tions are produced not only by circumstances but also by
creative minds.
The fi nal chapters explore special chairs. Chairs that
fold— safari chairs, director’s chairs, lawn chairs— are so
ubiquitous that they are almost invisible, yet portability and
chairs emerged hand in hand in ancient Egypt and dynastic
China. Knockdown furniture was developed simply for ease
of transport but has ended up as a marketing phenomenon.
We think of swings as children’s playthings, but swinging
seats likewise have ancient roots and have persisted in the
form of porch swings and gliders. Finally, chairs on wheels,
 INTRODUCTION 7

whether for infants or invalids, demonstrate how human in-

genuity can adapt an everyday object to special uses.
While we continue to use chairs based on historical
models— chaises longues, easy chairs, rocking chairs—two
dissimilar chairs represent our period’s particular, one might
say peculiar, contribution: the recliner and the ergonomic task
chair. While one is used mainly for watching television and
the other for desk work, both are based on a systematic study
of the human body and represent new solutions to age-old
problems: people come in different sizes, and comfortable sit-
ting requires that we are able to easily alter our position. In
both chairs mechanical adjustability provides an answer.
Chairs are affected by—and reflect— changes in technol-
ogy, materials, and economic and social conditions, yet they
remain intimately connected to peculiarities of the human
body—after all, we sit on them. At the same time, chairs com-
municate a lot about our attitudes—toward comfort, toward
status, toward our physical surroundings. They are inanimate
objects, but they speak to us. What they say is the subject of
this book.