(re-post)
Statistics can tell us amazing things like how many hours we will spend sleeping in a lifetime and how many dreams we likely have in each of those sleeps and how often we brush our teeth. I wonder how many times we sit in a chair. It would likely be an absolutely amazing number!
This got me thinking about the different kinds of chairs: high chairs, rocking chairs, air plane seats, office chairs, kitchen chairs, lawn chairs, waiting room chairs, school desk chairs, barber chairs, beach chairs, lounge chairs, basket chairs, living room chairs, dining room chairs, car seats, patio chairs, park benches, garden chairs, folding chairs, restaurant chairs, wheel chairs, stools, bicycle seats, scooter chairs, bath chairs …… Likely hundreds more.
And my next thought is that a very small percentage are comfortable. Considering how much time we must spend sitting in a chair, is this not a surprising observation.
Perhaps that explains my draw to chairs at garage sales: a quest for comfort and style.
I came across these two chairs many years ago in the driveway of a house just around the corner from where I am living now. They had just been brought out of the garage. The man selling them said he had had them for years and he got them because plastic chairs were a new thing when he bought them but he was tired of them and tired of storing them. They have travelled with me ever since, are comfortable, light, sturdy, and I like how they look with the wooden kitchen table or on the deck . At times they have sheep skins on them but for the moment the simple shape is on view.
The experience of these was what made me immediately zoom in on this chair at a garage sale a few months ago.
The ad in the paper had said the sale was to be held "in a lovely heritage garden." Heck, I'll go look at almost anything in "a lovely heritage garden" but for some reason I did not make this sale at the time of opening but an hour or so into it.
I immediately spotted this chair facing backwards between two tables holding oodles of interesting things and thought it might be being used as support and not for sale. It was for sale. It was muddy. It was mossy. It had been in the garden. It had been won as a door prize at a local art show opening several years before. I got it for $5.
The mud and moss washed off. Youngest son pulled at the legs (which were sloshing when shaken) to discover they came apart and water inside could be drained. I discovered words under the mud and traced (good ol' Google!) its origin to a Joe Colombo, Italian, 1968 design.
It is most wonderfully comfortable. It joins the other two at the kitchen table if necessary but mostly sits in another room.
It replaced this blue chair which, in the intent of the ongoing adventure of simplifying and only keeping what is being used, ought to be on its way elsewhere. For the moment it got moved beside this very comfortable lawn chair and is serving as a table for it. The green chair nicely reclines but is 'sunburned' and not in an 'aged' way – but it is so comfortable it keeps its place in the house.
However, should I come across a reclining, relaxing chair at a garage sale …..