Chair Avatars
This is a display area for my spare chairs - my various Twitter avatars.
Why Chairs?
Chairs symbolize social interaction. They invite you to sit down and stay a while; take a load off. You're probably sitting right now. We sit down to digest news. We sit to think. We sit to be social. You might say chairs are the first social media. Okay, you wouldn't but let's pretend.
Some beautiful chairs are painful to sit on (talkin' to you Frank Lloyd Wright, and owners of Indian restaurants everywhere). Many comfy chairs can look quite ugly. Chairs can fit with all situations - from thrones to bean-bags. Lawn chairs say "relax, enjoy the weather." Kitchen chairs say "have a bite." Dentists' chairs say "sit down and scream a while."
As an early user of Twitter in '07, I began to explore a dynamic avatar idea – it was always easy to identify my feed based on the avatar's subject matter, but the actual image changed often. If you followed me and my meanderings, I hope you found the conversation fun and/or thoughtful. Pull up a chair.
The avatar history is captured below...
Feb 6, 2013
Edwardian Bentwood Armchair
This is a humble chair is a variant of the Windsor chair that has roots back to the 16th century. This version is often called a captain's chair, or sometimes a tavern chair. In my family this was called a CN-House chair, in that there seemed to be some association between these chairs and those used to furnish 'company houses' in northern Canada where small towns were hacked out of the bush for the Canadian National Railway. I'm sure the designer is lost somewhere in time, but the product has a utilitarian Post-Victorian feel to it.
A pair of steel rods on exist on those of an early period to add a tension-member to the arm construction. The arm structure must have failed on earlier designs. The rod holds the bentwood arms down, interestingly going through the seat and terminating on one of the cross-spindles between the legs. A slightly awkward design choice, but presumably the designer liked it as a means to both pull the legs tight to the seat during manufacture, as well as retaining any spring-back possibility in the bentwood arm/back piece. Some versions don't have the tension rod, but these are likely later versions when the glue was improved and the spindles could do the work.
There are versions with and without the handle-hole in the back, and in most the spindles are turned with a bit of detail. This version features a slightly simplified spindle design in a contemporary copy. A few versions have a bit of pressed-back-style relief work in the back section.
For me these are childhood in a drafty old house, with snow deep as your waist and a train rattling the windows. Used for sitting cross-legged, with pants still a bit damp around the ankles from playing in the snow, and a mug of hot-chocolate made from Nestle-Quik and Carnation milk, but helped along with marshmallows.
A pair of steel rods on exist on those of an early period to add a tension-member to the arm construction. The arm structure must have failed on earlier designs. The rod holds the bentwood arms down, interestingly going through the seat and terminating on one of the cross-spindles between the legs. A slightly awkward design choice, but presumably the designer liked it as a means to both pull the legs tight to the seat during manufacture, as well as retaining any spring-back possibility in the bentwood arm/back piece. Some versions don't have the tension rod, but these are likely later versions when the glue was improved and the spindles could do the work.There are versions with and without the handle-hole in the back, and in most the spindles are turned with a bit of detail. This version features a slightly simplified spindle design in a contemporary copy. A few versions have a bit of pressed-back-style relief work in the back section.
For me these are childhood in a drafty old house, with snow deep as your waist and a train rattling the windows. Used for sitting cross-legged, with pants still a bit damp around the ankles from playing in the snow, and a mug of hot-chocolate made from Nestle-Quik and Carnation milk, but helped along with marshmallows.
