Chair tales

A new desk chair is needed, to replace this - or rather, its twin - back at the flat. 

I'd been walking past the Aram shop on the way to City Lit and spotted this chair in the window -

but ye gods, the price!

So the hunt was on, involving a trip down Clerkenwell Road, in and out of the "posh office furniture" showrooms, sitting and assessing, and capturing the possibilities -

and then to John Lewis -

Simple and practical - and only £60

Tom is looking for a desk chair of a very different sort

Loved this one, but the fabric seemed flimsy (£349)

One possibility, once you decide that you really don't need casters, or upholstery, is to go round secondhand furniture shops looking for a singleton chair that is both charming (vintage, retro?) and comfortable - "don't buy a chair without sitting on it first"; there was actually no hurry to get this "new chair", the "new desk" is some weeks off being ready...

...but in Liberty that a strange possibility came to light, which saved all that fruitless running around to the secondhand shops. A "church chair" - wooden but comfortable, and with an upright back to aid the posture (lumbar cushion is a possibility, easily attached).

We took it out for a meal at Cha Cha Moon, Kingly Court, and then it went home on the tube -

This strange journey of a chair takes me back to a similar journey in Oxford in 1982, furnishing the "new house" (43 Norreys Avenue) and bringing a rush-seated chair back from a secondhand shop, on the back of a bike. Recently it had to go - the seat had worn through and a stretcher was broken, and there was no place or need for a broken chair, no impetus to repair the seat... 

Chairs are powerfully evocative, with their occupants either missing or potential.