TT: Are you sitting down?

When I moved to the Upper West Side apartment in which I now live, I went to Staples and bought myself a cheap but functional swivel desk chair. It disintegrated a year or so ago, and I replaced it with one of my spare dining chairs, an ancient wooden folding chair with a cane seat. This was supposed to be a temporary expedient, but like many men, I don’t much care for shopping, so I never got around to buying a real desk chair. I spend roughly half of my waking hours sitting at my desk, though, and after months of hard use, the folding chair finally started to give out on me as well. Not wanting to be like Glenn Gould, who continued to use his homemade adjustable piano chair long after the bottom had fallen out of it, I decided that I had to get a new chair at once.
After spending three years sitting in a swivel chair with wheels, I knew I wanted something simpler and less mobile, and now that I’ve turned my apartment into a miniature museum, I figured that it ought to be aesthetically pleasing as well. Since the Teachout Museum is mostly devoted to American art, and since I’m a midcentury modernist at heart, it hit me that the time had come at last to add a piece by Charles and Ray Eames to my collection. After much thought, I came to the conclusion that an Eames molded plywood dining chair could easily do double duty as a desk chair, so I broke down and bought one last week. I’ve been sitting in it (and looking at it) with the utmost pleasure ever since.
It was Our Girl who first got me interested in the Eameses. She owns an Eames lounge chair that I’ve envied fiercely ever since I first laid eyes on it. My little desk chair is a vastly more modest affair, but I love it anyway, and it goes perfectly with the two Fairfield Porter lithographs that hang over my work space. Come see it, OGIC!
Now if only I can find a midcentury-modern couch small enough to fit into my living room and comfortable enough to sit in pleasurably….