St. Simone occasional chair by Victoria Hagan Home, available to the trade at Susan Mills Showroom, Seattle Design Center, Ste. A-200, (206) 682-6388.
Design Report
Chairs, We Covet Thee
Henry David Thoreau had three chairs in his house: “one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” After asking local design connoisseurs about the latest trends in chair designs and styles, we decided that unlike Thoreau, we could never live with just three


Reinterpretations of classic chair styles, such as the simple, straight-lined Biedermeier are always in vogue. This style was built for the middle classes of Austro-Hungary in 1805-1850.
Photo courtesy Iliad Antik


Library Chair by Gary Hutton, available to the trade at Trammell-Gagné, Seattle Design Center, Ste. A-117, (206) 957-6005.


Ladder Chair by BDDW, $1,600 at Ornamo, 301 Occidental Ave. S., (206) 859-6492.


Hanna Chair by Oly, $1,725 at Great Jones Home,  1921 Second Ave., (206) 448-9405.


Klismos chair by Donghia, available to the trade through Susan Mills Showroom.



Armless chair ($1,115) and ottoman ($608) at Area 51, 401 E. Pine St., (206) 568-4782.
Sitting in a vintage Gideon Kramer Ion chair makes me understand why design connoisseurs obsess about chairs. This simple object—a seat with a back and four legs—virtually transports me to the restaurant at the top of the Space Needle during the 1962 World’s Fair, for which the chair was designed. In the snugness of the molded plastic, I feel the pride Seattle had in its city and the excitement it held for its future.

After 1962, the Ion design was not only sold in Seattle, but around the world. In fact, about 1,000 of them went down with the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. My chance to sit in such a remarkable chair is thanks to Jason Hallman, co-owner of Area 51, who snapped up a few original Ion chairs about five years ago and has them stored away for personal pleasure.

Chairs, whether mundane, antique or designer, like the Ion, are worth a lot to a lot of people—culturally, visually and of course, monetarily. But why? Besides being signifiers of social position (think thrones), Peter Miller of Peter Miller Books notes that a chair’s profound functional purpose is in holding us off of the ground. “There’s a brilliance in a chair in that it will keep you up, that it will protect you, that it will honor you,” he says. Architects even design around them, as University of California architecture professor Galen Cranz notes—the height of window openings in buildings is based on the fact that we sit about 18 inches off the floor.

Our first chair artifacts come from King Tut’s tomb, but we may never know when the concept arose since we also have two-inch-tall Neolithic clay models of women sitting on chairlike forms. In the modern era, architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright designed furniture to match their architecture, making chairs condensed expressions of designers’ philosophies. No matter its origin, every chair serves as a cultural time capsule—just like the Ion.

For those who want to show they have taste in well-designed chairs, the task is relatively easy: Pick a Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair or an Eames lounge chair and ottoman and most everyone will approve. But what will be the collectables of the future? What is new in chairs? What are the current fashions in seating and what chairs do people want? Local design professionals look past the obvious to pinpoint the hot trends, showing us that today’s chairs are just as significant as yesterday’s.
 
One of Brian Balmert’s favorite new furniture design firms is BDDW in New York, whose Ladder Chair is sold in Balmert’s Pioneer Square store, Ornamo. He describes the chair, which references Gio Ponti’s 1957 Superleggera chair as well as 19th-century Shaker chairs, as “beautifully attenuated—delicate looking and sturdy.” BDDW is just one example of the recent resurgence of American-designed and American-made furniture. “We’re looking at a time right now with green issues that have come up, global warming and also a lopping off of the vitality of Italian design,” Balmert says. “I think you see a lot of this coming from younger people who are looking to our own culture, our own tradition and our own history to find things that are uniquely American.” 

At Area 51 on Capitol Hill, Jason Hallman and Dan Meltzer are turning more and more to furniture that serves two or even three purposes in response to the booming condo market. New lines in their store feature chairs that can recline and chairs that can fold down to act as ottomans, or even be paired together to act as an impromptu twin bed. Hallman says customers are asking for furniture that’s contemporary in design, but also smart in practice. “I also think that even those customers that don’t have a small space ask, ‘Why not have that extra bit of storage or a piece that does a couple of different things?’” Hallman says.

Comfortable chairs, such as barrel chairs, swivel chairs and lounge chairs, are popular across the board. “A lot of people live on the lake or have views of the Sound and they want to be able to turn and have a look at the view when they want to,” says Tom Hunter of Seattle Design Center’s Trammell-Gagné. Steven Sickenberger at SEVA Home in South Lake Union has also seen these comfy chairs fly out of his store. “Our clients live in downtown condos and are looking to maximize their space,” he says. Designers are meeting this demand with new and exciting options, such as Gary Hutton’s curvilinear Library Chair. Trammell-Gagné’s version, in zebrawood with bright mustard upholstery, screams ’60s modern, smart and sexy.

Many designers note that reinterpretations of classic chairs will always be paradoxically trendy and timeless. Nancy Burfiend of NB Design Group is a fan of Donghia’s streamlined versions of the ancient Greek-designed Klismos chair. The evolution of the Klismos, from the Greek version with exaggerated splayed legs to Donghia’s modern take, exemplifies the reductionist approach that Burfiend looks for in classic reinterpretations. “You take a design and you reign it in,” she says.

“A funny thing about a Chair:
You hardly ever think it’s there.
To know a Chair
is really it,
You sometimes
have to go and sit.”

–“The Chair,” Theodore Roethke
Burfiend’s other classically inspired go-tos include Victoria Hagan’s whimsically carved St. Simone Chair. “When you see it, you see that it really borrows from the classic element,” she says. “It’s just a very elegant small chair.”

Another take on classic updates is what interior designer Amy Baker terms “Grandma with an edge.” This means using either modern fabric on traditional or antique furniture, or using traditional fabrics on modern furniture. For one of her customers, Baker upholstered a simple lounge chair with a creamy beige fabric that had a big blown-up toile pattern in charcoal gray.

In the distant future, we may see a renewal of interest in certain materials, such as brass or natural wood. It’s all hypothesis, but the current popularity of stainless steel, chrome and ’70s design may be paving the way for brass. “We might be a ways away, I’m not sure,” says Area 51’s Jason Hallman. SEVA’s Sickenberger thinks we might also see chair designers using natural, light-colored wood soon because of our current focus on nature in the home—with a lighter wood, the grain becomes more prominent.

Our local experts know that whether someone’s style is mid-century modern, classically inspired, neo-eclectic or otherwise, the chair is often the cornerstone to a room’s design. It speaks volumes about taste and personality, as well as being a comfortable resting place. Luckily, we can have our chair and sit in it too. When Peter Miller put one of Alvar Aalto’s stylish woven fabric chairs in his living room, he says that his kids didn’t say a word—they just stopped using all of the other chairs in the room. Miller thought: “Wow, what a compliment to a chair.”