When I’m walking among the furniture at an auction house, something lovely and unusual always catches my eye. Sometimes it’s the color of an upholstered chair or the curved feet of a table or the substance of a chest.
Recently, I was struck by something that most of us would consider pedestrian – chair backs. I kept noticing that most of the side chairs in this one auction house had backs that were far from mundane. Some of them were so lovely that they reminded me of works of arts – some with simple details and others more elaborate.
Most were mass-produced, but they looked as if a designer somewhere in time had thought long and hard about how to make the backs more than a place to rest your back.
The designers created chair backs that were appealing. I could imagine any one of them – well, not exactly – as accent pieces in my home. The chairs were both vintage and antique, with a few modern pieces thrown in, and they recalled a time when craftsmanship was an important element in furniture no matter how functional the pieces.
Here’s just a glimpse of some the chair backs that spoke to me without saying a word:
