Dining Chair
Objects | Seating
A teak chair in black velvet, made for the cantilever table; the raked back stiles land on a diagonal brace.
- Location
- Bombay
- Medium
- oiled teak, black chenille velvet
- Category
- Objects | Seating
- Year
- 2023
Dining Chair
A teak chair in black velvet, made for the cantilever table. What makes it this chair is the back stile: it rakes back at twelve degrees, runs down past the seat, and lands on a diagonal brace that goes from the front leg to a foot behind the chair. Seen from the side the stile and the brace make a long open triangle, like the strut of a trestle, so the lean of the back is carried to the floor where it belongs.
Every member is cut from the same section, so the frame reads as one line drawn round the sitter. The two braces are tied to each other by a stretcher, so the triangle on each side is braced across the chair as well as along it. The teak is oiled, with the grain running along each member. The seat and back are cushions in black chenille velvet, the only soft thing on the chair and the only dark one.
Where the brace lands behind the chair; the rake of the stile.
A raked back on a chair with four straight legs would tip. Taking the stile down to a foot behind the chair puts the sitter's weight on the floor behind the seat, where it is, and lets the back lean without any bulk. The chair is light to lift, because the bracing does the work that bulk would otherwise do.
The velvet seat and the rail under it.
It was built in Bombay in 2023 and sits at the long side of a marble table that has no legs of its own, which is why the chair's legs are drawn so clearly. The detail is the twelve degrees. A dining chair that leans more becomes an armchair and pushes its sitter away from the plate; one that leans less is a stool with a board behind it. Twelve is the angle at which a person eats and then sits back, and the brace is drawn to carry exactly that.
Members 32 × 51 mm; seat 457 high, back 864.
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