Furniture Towns

Perhaps the British town most associated with furniture making is High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. It is claimed that in 1875 the town was producing 4,700 chairs a day and even today the town’s football team is known as the ‘Chair Boys.’

Famous Chairs: The Number 7 Chair

One of the most famous chairs of the 1960s was the ‘Number 7 chair’ by Danish designer Arne Jacobsen. It was made of plywood and copy of it appeared in a photograph with the model Christine Keeler. She was pictured nude, with the chair back obscuring her body from the camera. The pose became iconic and been copied many times since.

Growing Furniture?

Those with some spare ground may be interested to learn that a Chinese man has patented a method for growing his own furniture. Mr Wu, of Shenyang City, weaves the saplings into shape as they grow to form simple chairs. The disadvantage (just the one?) of the technique is that it takes up to six years to grow a chair.

Roosevelt always in a Chair

Almost all still photographs of America’s wartime President Franklin D Roosevelt, show him sitting on a chair of one kind or another. Sadly the great man had contracted polio and was paralysed from the waist down, a fact he kept from the public until his death in April 1945.

Chairs for Powerful only

For hundreds of years chairs were only owned by the most powerful people in society. They reflected the high status of the person who sat upon them and many English expressions, such as to ‘chair a meeting’ have come from this fact. Chairs only came into widespread use in about the 16th Century.