Hasta La Ideas

Interior design magazine RUM posted these shots of an NYC apartment renovation:

While the newer furniture pieces are credited, this vernacular chair in the second shot is not:

Image: Piet Albert Goethals

The seatback flows downward to become the front leg, of which there are only three, to handle uneven flooring. It is a fascinating piece of furniture, and one I’ve never seen before. I am dying to inspect it up close to see how it was joined.

Using Google’s image search turns up some vintage French and African chairs that bear some similarity to the design, structurally speaking…

…but none with the elegant gesture and minimal material use of the chair in question, shown larger below. I even love the ungainly, compensatory support beneath the seat that may have been added at a later time (the wood looks just a shade lighter to me). That the angles on the rear feet do not cleanly meet the floor made me wonder if the chair has sagged over time; but that seems unlikely, as if the feet angle did match the floor, the seat would be cast at too steep an angle. You can also see a hint of a handle at the top of the seatback.

Image: Piet Albert Goethals

Do any of you recognize this chair? Do any of you know who designed/built it? I have a bad feeling it was a thrift store find overseas, a one-off made a century ago by someone in a rural area whose name we’ll never know. But I’m hoping one of you will recognize it as typical of a particular region and time.