What Our Chairs Say About Us

In Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith has some difficulty with a swivel chair:

Responding irritably, her words say more about her class than the chair.

The Spread of the Chair

With yesterday’s chair similar to today’s, its technology is rather static. Still though, as a reflection of values and taste, its message has evolved.

Chairs can display a society’s stratification. In ancient Egypt, everyone but the most elite, with their armrests and chairbacks. sat on stools or the ground. At affluent Roman dinners, the rooms could have had three couches on which diners reclined. By contrast, during the Middle Ages, most people could not afford a chair. Displaying 16th century peasant life, the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicted ordinary people at a wedding sitting on benches. Only the bride’s father would have had a chair with a back. Correspondingly, reflecting the dearth of chairs, in the King James Bible, the Iliad, Hamlet, there is no mention of a chair.  Then though, by the mid-19th century, we climb to 187 in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.

Continuing to look back, in ancient Greece, chair sitting seemed more democratic as images depict women, gods, and musicians in chairs. Then, more recently, with the onset of the typewriter and telegraphy, we began to sit at work. In 1851, the census suggests that fewer than 44.000 people did administrative work. Ascending, 20 years later, it’s 91,000. In addition, we began to enjoy sedentary leisure.

This Google NGram documents the use of the word chair from 1600 to 2022 in literature:

Using a third way to see the impact of chairs, we can look at what distinguishes floor sitting communities from the chair sitters. Fundamentally, we have different behavioral and structural incentives at home and at work. Floor sitters tend to wear sandals or slippers and loose fitting clothing. At home, cabinets are closer to the floor. Correspondingly, floors have to be smoother and warmer. Meanwhile, chair-sitting societies need furniture like dining and desk tables that yes, lets them sit in chairs. They tend to sleep in beds while floor sitters have mats.

Our Bottom Line: Chair Economics

Okay, yes, I know I am careening through thousands of years of sitting. However, at the heart of all of these chair facts, there is a message. As a mirror of culture, chairs can reflect stratification or equality. They provide incentives that shape how we furnish our homes. They can even determine which muscles we will strengthen, and which get weaker.

And certainly, our chairs, as easy as they are to ignore, have created incentives that get to the roots of supply and demand at home, at work, and even in politics. It all reminds me that the market (unlike command economies) functions from the bottom up.

My sources and more; Thanks to this TED talk for inspiring today’s post. From there, this Atlantic article came in handy as did this NPR book review and these brief comments from Vybarr Cregan-Reid..

Please note that, having lost the image in my original post, I added the NGram in May, 2025.