Now I Sit Me Down (29 page)

4. A Chair on the Side

1. 1
   . The claw hammer, like the forged iron nail, was invented by the ancient Romans.
   

2. 2
   . The guild of upholsterers, who were originally called “upholders,” was founded in 1626.
   

5. A Golden Age

1. 1
   . The term “wing chair” is relatively recent. The first mention of a “wing-back chair” is in John Steinbeck's
   To a God Unknown
   (1933).
   

2. 2
   . Identification is further complicated by the fact that after Chippendale retired in 1777, his son—also named Thomas—continued to make furniture for another twenty-seven years.
   

3. 3
   .  The largest cabinetmaker in London was George Seddon, who also started as a joiner, and who employed four hundred craftsmen in what was effectively a furniture factory.
   

4. 4
   . There were two more editions. The expanded third edition was cleverly published as a succession of weekly four-plate folios at one shilling each, greatly enlarging Chippendale's readership.
   

5. 5
   . The cost broke down as follows: 40 percent joinery and carving, 40 percent upholstery, and 20 percent gilding.
   

6. Sack-backs and Rockers

1. 1
   . When John Trumbull, who trained in London, painted
   The Declaration of Independence
   , which appears on the back of the two-dollar bill, he replaced the common sack-backs with upholstered armchairs. Junius Brutus Stearns and Howard Chandler Christy followed this convention in their painted depictions of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. In fact, the only “fancy” chair in the Assembly Room of Independence Hall was the speaker's Chippendale-style armchair.
   

2. 2
   . Kennedy was hardly the first president to bring a rocking chair into the White House. Lincoln favored rockers; McKinley had one; so did Theodore Roosevelt. Coolidge kept one on the porch, and Truman had several on the first-floor balcony that he added to the rear portico.
   

7. The Henry Ford of Chairs

1. 1
   . The family was of Huguenot descent, but the name is pronounced in German “Tawn-net.”
   

2. 2
   . The exception was Sweden and Denmark, where rocking chairs were introduced by emigrants returning from America.
   

8. By Design

1. 1
   . “Wassily” refers to the painter Wassily Kandinsky, who also taught at the Bauhaus. The name was not coined by Breuer but by an Italian manufacturer in 1960.
   

2. 2
   . The chair was named in the 1950s, after Breuer's daughter Francesca.
   

3. 3
   . The A811F is sometimes called the Prague Chair, a name that originated with Charles Stendig, whose company imported the chair to the United States in the 1950s. Stendig credited Josef Hoffmann with the design, although most historians today ascribe it to Frank.
   

4. 4
   .  By the 1930s, Thonet was no longer a leader in chair design. The upheaval of World War II and the subsequent nationalization of Thonet factories behind the Iron Curtain would signal the demise of the company as a global force.
   

5. 5
   . Aalto was influenced by his friend the Swedish architect Erik Gunnar Asplund, who in 1925 had designed an easy chair—the Senna Chair—with a shell-like seat and back of leather stretched on carved walnut.
   

6. 6
   . When the Saarinen-Eames chair was finally put into production (in 2004), the price of the reading chair exceeded $2,000.
   

7. 7
   . Today, Eames shell chairs are also made of injection-molded polypropylene.
   

8. 8
   . This explains why today the Cesca costs more than twice as much as an Eames shell chair.
   

9. Great Dane

1. 1
   . Twisted paper reinforced with wire was developed in the early 1900s in the United States to manufacture wicker furniture. Unreinforced paper cord, stronger and longer-lasting than bulrush, was used by so many Danish furniture makers in the 1940s and '50s that it is often referred to as “Danish cord.”
   

2. 2
   . Wegner did not name his chairs. The names came either from manufacturers or from the media. The Peacock Chair was named by the furniture maker Finn Juhl.
   

3. 3
   . Wegner's three-shell chair anticipated the Eames lounge chair by seven years.
   

10. Fold and Knockdown, Swing and Roll

1. 1
   . The traditional Chinese character
   jiao
   , which means cross or exchange, includes a pictogram with crossed legs that resembles the X-frame of a folding chair.
   

2. 2
   . The French called the deck chair
   transat
   , a shortening of
   chaise transatlantique
   .
   

3. 3
   . All IKEA products are given names. Chairs have men's names, outdoor furniture is named after Swedish islands, dining sets are named after Finnish islands, and so on.
   

11. Human Engineering

1. 1
   . Archie Bunker, the character in the popular television series
   All in the Family
   , did not sit in a recliner, but in a worn wing chair.
   

2. 2
   . This was not the first application of plastic mesh in a chair. As early as 1966, Richard Schultz designed a line of outdoor furniture—side chair, lounge chair, chaise longue—using vinyl-coated polyester mesh stretched on cast and extruded aluminum frames.
   

3. 3
   . Trumpeting recyclability is a major part of marketing office task chairs, which is odd given that a well-made chair will last for generations.
   

4. 4
   . This expression, which Diffrient quoted approvingly in his autobiography, originated with Alec Issigonis, the British automobile engineer who designed the Mini.
   

12. Our Time

1. 1
   . In 1984, Niels Diffrient, who once said, “The best chair is a bed,” unveiled a horizontal workstation that consisted of a reclining chair and ottoman somewhat awkwardly combined with an IBM PC. He was three decades ahead of his time.
   

2. 2
   . Over the years, Knoll acquired the rights to many Mies and Breuer chairs.
   

3. 3
   . More than 8 million 40/4 chairs have been sold since its debut. In 1981, 40/4s filled Westminster Cathedral for Princess Diana's wedding.
   

4. 4
   . The British Polyprop Chair, which appeared in 1963, was the first chair made of injected polypropylene, although only the one-piece seat and back was plastic; the legs were metal.
   

5. 5
   . The stylish wood-and-metal folding bistro chair is another nineteenth-century chair that has endured—it was patented in 1889.
   

 

NOTES ON SOURCES

1. A Tool for Sitting

A detailed description of François Boucher's
Le déjeuner
is contained in
What Great Paintings Say: Volume 2
(Taschen, 2003) by Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen. George Kubler's penetrating study is
The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things
(Yale University Press, 1962). Christopher Alexander's observation on furniture is from
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
(Oxford University Press, 1977).

2. If You Sit on It, Can It Still Be Art?

Jean-François Oeben's mechanical dressing table is discussed by André Boutemy in “Les Table-Coiffeuses de Jean-François Oeben,”
Bulletin de la Société
de l'histoire de l'art français
(1962). Details of Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire's life at Cirey are vividly described by Nancy Mitford in
Voltaire in Love
(E. P. Dutton, 1985). Françoise de Graffigny's description of Madame du Châtelet's rooms is from
Françoise de Graffigny: Choix de Lettres
, English Showalter, ed. (Voltaire Foundation, 2001). Showalter's “Graffigny at Cirey: A Fraud Exposed,”
French Forum
21 (January 1996), is also revealing. John Summerson's wise observation on ornament is from “The Mischievous Analogy” in
Heavenly Mansions: And Other Essays on Architecture
(W. W. Norton, 1963). I first explored the subject of ornament in “Homo Ornarens,” an essay in
Designed for Delight: Alternative Aspects of Twentieth-Century Decorative Arts
, Martin Eidelberg, ed. (Flammarion, 1997), which accompanied an exhibition at Montreal's Musée des arts décoratifs. I wrote about John Dunnigan's furniture in the Arts & Leisure section of
The New York Times
(May 5, 1991). Quotes from Dunnigan are based on personal conversations and are also drawn from
John Dunnigan Furniture Maker
(Peter Joseph Gallery, 1991), an interview with Dunnigan in Bebe Pritam Johnson and Warren Eames Johnson's
Speaking of Furniture: Conversations with 14 American Masters
(Artist Book Foundation, 2013), and Dunnigan's essay in
Under Cover: Some Thoughts on Upholstered Furniture
, an exhibition catalogue (Gallery NAGA, Boston, 2005).

3. Sitting Up

Gordon W. Hewes's classic study “The Anthropology of Posture” appeared in
Scientific American
(February 1957) and was originally published as “World Distribution of Certain Postural Habits” in
American Anthropologist
, vol. 2, no. 1, part 1 (April 1955). G.M.A. Richter's authoritative
The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans
(Phaidon Press, 1966) provides much useful information. The Bernard Rudofsky quote is from
Behind the Picture Window
(Oxford University Press, 1955). The Chinese adoption of the chair is described in several scholarly works: C. P. FitzGerald's
Barbarian Beds: The Origin of the Chair in China
(Cresset Press, 1965); Sarah Handler's
Austere Luminosity of Chinese Classical Furniture
(University of California Press, 2001); and George N. Kates's pioneering
Chinese Household Furniture
(Harper & Brothers, 1948). The French diplomat's 1795 visit to Peking is quoted by Fernand Braudel in
The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible
, Siân Reynolds, trans. (Harper & Row, 1981), which is also the source of the other Braudel quotes. Nicolas Andry's
Orthopaedia
(J. B. Lippincott, 1961) is a facsimile edition of the first English translation, which was published in London in 1743, two years after it appeared in Paris. Ellen Davis Kelly's observation on posture is from
Teaching Posture and Body Mechanics
(Ronald Press, 1949). The research of Drs. Staffel and Strasser is discussed by Edward H. Bradford and Robert W. Lovett in
Treatise on Orthopedic Surgery
(William Wood, 1899). Bengt Åkerblom documents his research in
Standing and Sitting Posture, with Special Reference to the Construction of Chairs
, Ann Synge, trans. (A.B. Nordiska Bokhandlen, 1948). Paul Branton's evocative description of the dynamics of sitting is from
The Comfort of Easy Chairs
(Furniture Industry Research Association, 1966).

4. A Chair on the Side

Cycladic sculpture is discussed by Pat Getz-Preziosi in
Early Cycladic Sculpture: An Introduction
(J. Paul Getty Museum, 1994) and by Joan R. Mertins in “Some Long Thoughts on Early Cycladic Sculpture,”
Metropolitan Museum Journal
33 (1998). I gleaned information on Roman chairs from G.M.A. Richter's
The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans
and Roger B. Ulrich's
Roman Woodworking
(Yale University Press, 2007). The seating arrangement of the trial of Jean II, Duke of Alençon, is detailed in S. H. Cuttler, “A Report to Sir John Fastolf on the Trial of Jean, Duke of Alençon,”
The English Historical Review
, vol. 96, no. 381 (October 1981). The Braudel quote is from
The Structures of Everyday Life.
Seventeenth-century chairs are discussed by John Gloag in
The Englishman's Chair: Origins, Design, and Social History of Seat Furniture in England
(George Allen & Unwin, 1964), which remains a useful reference. Vincent Scully's vivid description of the cabriole chair is from
New World Visions of Household Gods & Sacred Places: American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art 1650–1914
(Little, Brown, 1988).

5. A Golden Age

I came across the Ham House “sleeping chayres” in
The English Chair: Its History and Evolution
(M. Harris & Sons, 1937), and they are also described by John Gloag in
A Social History of Furniture Design: From B.C. 1300 to A.D. 1960
(Bonanza Books, 1966). I have referred to A. Hepplewhite & Co.,
The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterers Guide
(I. & J. Taylor, 1794), and Thomas Chippendale,
The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director
(1754). Christopher Gilbert's exemplary biography,
The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale
(Studio Vista, 1978), is a useful source. The story of Chippendale's smuggling is recounted by Edward T. Joy in “Chippendale in Trouble at the Customs,”
Country Life
110 (August 24, 1951). I leaned heavily on Bill G. B. Pallot's first-rate
The Art of the Chair in Eighteenth-Century France
(ACR-Gismondi Editeurs, 1989), and also drew on Charles Saumarez Smith's
Eighteenth-Century Decoration: Design and the Domestic Interior in England
(Harry N. Abrams, 1993) and John Whitehead's
The French Interior: In the Eighteenth Century
(Dutton Studio Books, 1992). The Peter Thornton quote is from his penetrating study,
Authentic Decor: The Domestic Interior, 1620–1920
(Viking, 1984).

6. Sack-backs and Rockers

Luke Vincent Lockwood's
Colonial Furniture in America
(Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921) is a valuable reference to the period. The Richard L. Bushman quote is from
The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). For a description of the furniture at Mount Vernon see Helen Maggs Fede's detailed
Washington Furniture at Mount Vernon
(Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union, 1966), Margaret Van Cott's “Thomas Burling of New York City, Exponent of the New Republic Style,”
Furniture History
37 (2001), and Allan Greenberg's
George Washington, Architect
(Andreas Papadakis, 1999). I also consulted Thomas H. Ormsbee's
The Windsor Chair
(Hearthside Press, 1962) and Nancy Goyne Evans's exhaustive
American Windsor Furniture: Specialized Forms
(Hudson Hills Press, 1997). The Philip Schaff quote is from
America: Its Political, Social and Religious Character
(Harvard University Press, 1961; originally published in 1854).