Now I Sit Me Down (32 page)

Podmaniczky, Michael

Pollock, Charles: executive chair

Polyprop Chair

Pompadour, Madame de

Pop Art

Pope, Alexander

porch swings

Portugal

postmodernism

Postsparkasse (Vienna)

posture,
see
sitting posture

potato-chip chair

Poulsen, Louis

PP Møbler

Prague (No. A811F) chair

Pratt Institute

Prince-Ramus, Joshua

Principia Mathematica
(Newton)

Prussia

Purkersdorf Sanatorium

Pye, David

Quakers

Rameau, Jean-Philippe

Rannie, James

Reading from Molière
(Troy)

Récamier, Juliette

recliners

Red Blue Chair

Red Chair

Reich, Lilly: Barcelona Chair; Tugendhat Chair

Renaissance; scissors chair

Renoir, Pierre-Auguste

Revolutionary War

Reynolds, Joshua

Rhode Island School of Design

ribband-back chair

Rietveld, Gerrit; Red Blue Chair

Rittweger, Otto

Rock-A-Fella recliners

rocking chairs; innovative

rococo style

Roman Catholic Church

Romans; couches; curule

Roorkhee Chair

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano

Roosevelt, Theodore

round chair

Rowland, David; 40/4 stacking chair

Royal Copenhagen

Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts

Rudofsky, Bernard

rustic side chairs

Saarinen, Eero; Model 71; reading chair; Tulip Chair; Womb Chair

Saarinen, Eliel

Sacco beanbag chair

sack-back Windsor chairs

“saddle cheek” chairs,
see
wing chairs

Safari Chair

safari chairs

St. Edward's chair

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de

St. Peter, Chair of

Sarah Chair

Sauder, Erie J.

Scandinavia;
see also
Denmark; Sweden

Scandinavian folding stool

Schaff, Philip

Schaukensofa

Schinkel, Karl Friedrich

Schultz, Richard

Schwarzenberg family

scissors chair

Scotland

Scully, Vincent

Seattle Central Library

Secession movement

Seddon, George

Sené, Jean-Baptiste-Claude

Senna Chair

Series 7 chairs

settees

Shaker-style furniture

Shape of Time, The
(Kubler)

shell chairs

Sheraton, Thomas

side chairs; American; ancient (
see also
klismos chairs); Chinese; Chippendale-style; French; knockdown; modernist; rustic; stacking;
see also
cabriole chairs; café chairs; dining chairs

Siesta-Medizinal

sitting posture; cultural and historical variations in; physiology of human body and

Sitzmaschine

Slate

Slumber Chair

Smithsonian Institution

sofas; rocking

Song dynasty

Song of Roland

Sotheby's auction house

Sottsass, Ettore

South Carolina

Southeast Asia

Spain

sprung upholstery

stacking chairs

Staffel, Franz

Stam, Mart; cantilever chair

Standard-Möbel

steamer chairs

Stearns, Junius Brutus

Steinbeck, John

Stendig, Charles

Stickley, Gustav

Stockholm Public Library

Stone, Ebenezer

stools; ancient; camp; modernist;
see also
barstools; footstools; ottomans

Stradivari, Antonio

Strasser, Hans

Stratolounger

strollers

Stryker medical equipment company

studio furniture

Stumpf, William; Aeron Chair; Ergon Chair; Sarah Chair

“subjunctive ornament”

Summerson, John

surface modulation

Sur-repos, Le

Sweden

swings

Switzerland

swivel chairs

tables; seating at (
see also
café chairs; dining chairs)

taborets

Taft, William Howard

Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles-Maurice de

task chairs

Thomsen, Nils

Thonet, August; No. 18;
Schaukensofa

Thonet, Michael; café chairs; No. 14;
see also
Gebrüder Thonet

Thornton, Peter

thrones

Tilliard, Jean-Baptiste

Titanic
(ship)

Tocqueville, Alexis de

To a God Unknown
(Steinbeck)

Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de

Townsend, John

Trollope, Frances

Troy, Jean-François de

Truman, Harry S.

Trumble, Francis

Tulip Chair

Turkey

umbrella stroller

United States; adequate supply of chairs in; adjustable chairs in; Fenby Chair in; holiday decorations in; House of Representatives Speaker's chair in; knockdown furniture in; navy of; papasan chairs in; presidential desk chairs in; recliners in; rocking chairs in; studio furniture in; swings in; wood exported from

upholstered furniture; armchairs; desk chairs; easy chairs; French; modernist; recliners; rockers; side chairs; stools; wing chairs

valet chairs

Van Severen, Maarten

Vatican

Velardi, Marco

Venice

Venturi, Robert

Veranda Chair

Veronese, Paolo

Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria Eugénie, Queen of Spain

Victory
(ship)

Vienna

Vikings

Virgil

Virginia

Vispré, François-Xavier

Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein, Germany)

Vivaldi, Antonio

Voltaire

Voysey, C.F.A.

Wagner, Otto; Fledermaus chair; Postsparkasse stool

Wanscher, Ole

Warren Chair Works

Washington, George

Washington, Martha

Washington Post

Wassily Chair

Watteau, Antoine

Webb, Philip

Wegner, Hans J.; Fireplace Chair; Flag Halyard Chair; Peacock Chair; rocking chair; round chair; Shell Chair; three-shell chair; valet chair; Wishbone Chair

Weissenhoff Exhibition (Stuttgart, 1927)

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Cathedral

wheelchairs

White House

Wiener Werkstätte

Wilson, Woodrow

Windsor chairs; American; design influence of; English origin of; mass production and marketing of

wing chairs; variants of

Wishbone Chair

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Womb Chair

World Chair

World War II

Wright, Frank Lloyd

X-frames

Yale University

yokeback chairs

 

ALSO BY
WITOLD RYBCZYNSKI

Paper Heroes

Taming the Tiger

Home

The Most Beautiful House in the World

Waiting for the Weekend

Looking Around

A Place for Art

City Life

A Clearing in the Distance

One Good Turn

The Look of Architecture

The Perfect House

Vizcaya
(with Laurie Olin)

Last Harvest

My Two Polish Grandfathers

Makeshift Metropolis

The Biography of a Building

How Architecture Works

Mysteries of the Mall

 

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Witold Rybczynski
is a writer and an emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of
How Architecture Works
and
Mysteries of the Mall
and has written about architecture and design for
The New Yorker
,
The Atlantic
,
The New York Times
, and
Slate
. Among his award-winning books are
Home
,
The Most Beautiful House in the World
, and
A Clearing in the Distance
, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. He is the winner of the 2007 Vincent Scully Prize and the 2014 Design Mind Award from the National Design Awards. He lives with his wife in Philadelphia. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

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here
.

 

CONTENTS

Title Page

Frontispiece

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

1. A Tool for Sitting

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

3. Sitting Up

4. A Chair on the Side

5. A Golden Age

6. Sack-backs and Rockers

7. The Henry Ford of Chairs

8. By Design

9. Great Dane

10. Fold and Knockdown, Swing and Roll

11. Human Engineering

12. Our Time

Notes

Notes on Sources

Acknowledgments

Index

Also by Witold Rybczynski

A Note About the Author

Copyright

 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2016 by Witold Rybczynski

All rights reserved

First edition, 2016

All illustrations are by the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rybczynski, Witold, author.

Title: Now I sit me down: from klismos to plastic chair: a natural history / Witold Rybczynski.

Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015041604 | ISBN 9780374223212 (hardback) | ISBN 9780374713355 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Chairs—History. | Sitting customs—History. | BISAC: ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES / Furniture. | ARCHITECTURE / History / General.

Classification: LCC NK2715 .R93 2016 | DDC 749/.3209—dc23

LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041604

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