Sit and Take a Load Off Your Feet: The Ever-Evolving Styles of Chairs
By Bill Primavera
As a realtor who really enjoys his work, I have no regrets about any of the deals I’ve brokered for either my buyers or sellers – except for one detail I brokered for the sale of my own home a half-dozen years ago.
I sold a big old colonial home, which I exchanged for a spanking new condo at Trump Park. Because I was downsizing from a 14-room home to a space that’s more appropriate for my lifestyle, I was delighted when my buyers told me I could leave behind any of the furnishings, which they liked. I didn’t have to worry about unloading them.
Frequently since that time, I have been reminded of my one regret about that deal: leaving behind a big, comfortable wingback chair because I thought it was too bulky for my new space. Now, many times when I sit to read or meditate in a pared-down and boney Martha Washington-type chair, I regret that decision.
Readers of this column know that I like to discover where everything around the house comes from, and I wondered how long people have sat in chairs? When sharing that apple, Adam and Eve must have sat on a rock or fallen log, but that would assume that trees fell to the ground in paradise.
Or if you’re more evolution minded, you might consider that our ancestor, the ape, had no rump at all for comfort and probably just squatted.
But once man stood upright and developed a more ample derriere, there surely was a need once in a while to take a load off his feet by sitting.
My earliest memory of a reference to sitting was when, as a five-year-old, I giggled uncontrollably over a comedic line from Groucho Marx where Margaret Dumont was told to sit to take a load off the floor.
Plopping down in a chair is something one never usually thinks about unless it’s excruciatingly uncomfortable, too low to get out of or used for some lesson or cautionary tale, like my first nun threatening that any misbehavior would involve our having to “sit in the corner.” My mother once told my older siblings and me that we must always sit in a chair when eating so that the food would not travel down and give us fat ankles! My brother, always more a wiseacre than I, responded, “But if we sit in a chair when we eat, won’t we get fat rear ends?”
While it is not certain when the first person crafted a seat with a back and sat in it, archeological evidence at Neolithic sites indicates bench-like seating areas. The earliest physical evidence we have of chairs is from the Egyptian tombs from about 2800 BC, but such comforts were normally reserved to denote higher elevation in society.
It wasn’t until the Renaissance in Europe that the chair came into more general use. Since that time, the style of chairs has reflected the times in which they were crafted as much as fashion for clothing.
But it was the industrial revolution in which chairs could be machine-made that placed them into every household.
Almost from the beginning, chairs of plain utilitarian design sat alongside those of great style and beauty. Chair design came into its own in our culture when nurtured by our original settlers who brought style along with function from their motherland, starting with the Jacobean style, then Queen Anne, followed by Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite to Victorian, the uncomfortable Hitchcock chair, then art deco and what we enjoy today as modern.
Today we have modern works of art realized in chair design, created with both ergonomic and functional considerations. But then chairs were always functional. The original intention for wingback chairs, for instance, was to shield its occupants from drafts in the room, but the design has survived to this day.
Before they were machine manufactured, chairs were of great value as witnessed by the last will and testament of the original owner of that 18th century home I owned who specified that his “kitching” chairs were to be left to his oldest son.
Until recently I have been a traditionalist, living as I did in antique homes and collecting antique furnishings, and I’ve owned different types of chairs, ranging from early Queen Anne, and later Hepplewhite, to a prized barrel back chair from the 1930s that I am told was the favorite of Mayor LaGuardia in his office at City Hall.
Most of them were uncomfortable compared to a cushy new Lawson-style sofa I bought for my current residence. Now I can just plop down in comfort, not caring a fig about what influenced its style.
Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., the longest-running public relations agency in Westchester (www.PrimaveraPR.com), specializing in lifestyles, real estate and development. To engage the services of The Home Guru and his team to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
Examiner Media – Keeping you informed with professionally-reported local news, features, and sports coverage.
