One of the joys of coffee or a sandwich in the cozy confines of LaSalle Market on Collinsville’s Main Street is the eclectic collection of chairs clustered at the many wooden tables. Customers sit in bow-back arm chairs, delicate bentwood and sturdy Mission designs, high-back dining room styles, stools of tubular metal, faux Windsors with delicate spindles, and modern types with fabric seats. Some look like they came straight from mom’s kitchen or a college dorm. I’ve counted at least a dozen different types.
Perhaps their variety helps draw the wonderfully eclectic clientele. “A setting that is full of chairs, all slightly different, immediately creates an atmosphere which supports rich experience,” wrote architecture professor Christopher Alexander. Chairs are an invitation. They make us feel welcome. Even the prickly Thoreau found space in his tiny Walden Pond hut for chairs—“one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society.”
Among life’s most common objects, chairs have been described as “a prosthetic device for a cultural disorder called ‘Walking Upright,’” by design critic Ralph Caplan who deemed them “the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything.” In an age where work and recreation increasingly find us sitting, chairs grow ever more important, rewarding us with social insights, a sense of beauty and, hopefully, comfort.
Chairs have a pedigree lost to antiquity, but for ages were an instrument of privilege for the mighty and powerful. Not until the fifteenth century were they
While no longer a symbol of prerogative, chairs remain more than just places to sit. Their style and placement reveal much about physician’s waiting rooms, hotels, government offices and restaurants. On entering a home, chairs give an instant glimpse into the inhabitants’ character. Are the living room chairs formal and stiff and rarely used or is there an inviting lounger or relaxing rocker? Do those gathered around the dining room table match? Are modern designs favored or antiques collected? Do chairs face each other awaiting people in conversation or are they gathered around a television?
It shocked me to count almost forty chairs in my own house ranging from tubular aluminum models with plastic webbing on the terrace to simple wooden Windsors nearly two hundred years old in my dining
Our chairs have stories. Looking at them is like leafing through pages of an autobiography. I have the desk chair I sat in as a child, a dark Victorian organ stool my Dad refurbished, a side chair I discovered in the attic of my first apartment, an old Windsor given to me on my fortieth birthday, an Adirondack rocker I found in a waterfront antique store, and a variety of others rich with memories of people and places. There are chairs for eating, reading working, watching television and intimate conversation.
Chairs possess a magic that stirs passion. How else to explain why master architects like Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier went to great lengths creating original chairs, or why Frank Lloyd Wright designed over two hundred. For what other reason do craftsmen
Stopping at LaSalle Market, whether for a slice of lunchtime pizza or on a crowded open mic night, reminds me that chairs are a means for gathering people. I delight in the variety of styles available, and my selection has much to do with my mood, the purpose of my visit and how long I plan to stay. Ordinary things, chairs nevertheless deserve more than a casual glance. Have a seat and think about it.
