1:35 Kuchyňké židle

A chair was never bought on its own

Household furniture has its own logic of repetition. While there was one wardrobe or one table in a room, chairs were bought straight away in the number that suited the family, and when one broke the rest stayed the same. Around a table, therefore, there usually stood pieces from one production run, merely worn to different degrees. A set that offers a pair respects that fact: two identical pieces side by side look natural, while a single isolated one looks like an accessory that fell out of another setting.

Four castings, two chairs

In the package there are four parts, from which two chairs are made. A division into two parts per piece is usual with this shape: the seat with the legs is cast separately from the back, because otherwise the slender vertical elements could not be drawn out of the mold. The joint is short and unobtrusive, and it is all the more important to level both faces before gluing, so that the back does not sit crooked.

Wood that can be graded

Kitchen furniture used to be stained or painted with an opaque color, and its condition said something about the state of a household. The recommended procedure is to start with a medium brown base and only then decide whether it is to be polished wood, a worn finish or a piece painted over in a hurry. If you give each of the two chairs different wear, you also gain a sense of time, because one will look more used than the other.

Placement in a room

The most obvious position is at the table, but that is also the dullest. Try pushing one chair back, as though somebody had just got up from it, and turning the other toward the window. A chair pushed back creates an empty place among the furniture, and that empty place is in fact a trace of a person. In a damaged interior an overturned piece serves just as well, because broken furniture tells of an event that took place in the room.