object · tubular-steel cantilever chair · context · 1762 dining room · impossibility · seamless drawn steel
the room is as accurate as a record. wax candles, mahogany table, paneled walls in the dove-grey the period preferred for dining. everything is from the household inventory: silver, plate, the bishop's chair on the left. at the far place setting, what should be a fauteuil is a frame of tubular steel, black-painted, cantilever, no rear legs. it cannot be from this room.
seamless drawn steel tubing is not made until the 1880s. the cantilever idea is later still. and yet the chair fits — the dimensions are correct for the table, the height correct for the floor, even the pad would catch a 1762 candlestub at the same angle. somebody set this place. somebody who knew the future of chairs and brought it back.
the supposition: a thieving curator. the supposition: the room was built around the chair, not the other way. the supposition: when the house is empty, the chair waits its century out, patient.
field-note · the floorboards under it are not scored by drag-marks. it has not been moved. its century has not yet arrived to claim it.
br · chair · one chair · thinking chair · paint · chair · pencil · renaissance