Probably my curiosity concerning chairs goes back to my war time childhood. As very small children we knelt on the seats facing the back rest and rocked the broad wood band at the top which eventually broke. My father mended them with metal L shaped strips and we were taught greater respect for them.
Periodically my mother re-upholstered these dining room chairs which lifted them in our childish minds from “tatty old chairs” to something slightly more acceptable. Standing on any chair, these in particular, was absolutely forbidden in our family.
A local family, owners of a large Victorian house, decided to open a school to give their two spinster daughters a dignified occupation. This was a great success and the empty rooms allotted as classrooms were soon not enough. I was one of the five children in the top class. We were put into the sitting room for our lessons with the principal. We sat around a gate legged table on a variety of elegant chairs. My two favorites were black lacquered with mother of pearl inlay. Much more interesting than the varnished cane seated ones but rather fragile in the face of wriggly children not taken with maths. They were forbidden to us so the fight was for those with velvet covered seats.
I got a scholarship to art school at fourteen and the elegant environment of early school was only to be found in museums from then on.
Life raced on and amongst “chair happenings” was the sharp awakening on the death of our parents. When putting a value on the junky old furniture with which we were brought up, the Sotherby’s man drew back in horror at my father’s repair methods and forbade us to restore anything before selling the mahogany 17th century Waterloo chairs……..