You Need a Slipper Chair in Your Life!

I love chairs of all kinds.  I am known to bring home any stray chair that I feel is orphaned and needs a good home.  Little antique French ones are favorites and are sprinkled around my house.  But another type of chair that I cannot resist is a cute little slipper chair.  Every house needs a least one somewhere.

Slipper chairs have quite a romantic back-story, as they are said to have served the function of giving Victorian ladies a low, armless chair on which to sit while putting on stockings and shoes.  The lack of arms made room for the billowing skirts worn in those days.  I just know that aesthectically a slipper chair is very pleasing to me.

Slipper chairs are just so versatile because of their small scale.  You can tuck them into so many places in a room.  It can often be a good solution for treating an awkward corner.  Pairing a slipper chair with a small drink table, as in the photo above, creates a cozy reading spot.

 This is a cell-phone shot of a similar chair I snapped at a recent furniture show.  This chair is from Lee Industries.  I wanted to illustrate how, even when there is button-tufting present, a pretty print fabric such as this blue-and-white ikat style, looks great.  So pretty!

 I think this little chair is just so unique and stylish.  More button-tufting and legs with casters, two of my favorite style details.

How about this for something truly different and utterly feminine?  I love it in a neutral linen like this and it would be fantastic in a large scale print as well.

This is a little antique slipper chair I have owned for a very long time, from back when finding something like this was rare, before French reproductions became so common.  It is done in needlepoint.

This slipper chair has a very classic, sophisticated feel which I think would look great done in a living room in a pair, side-by-side.

This was another one of my vintage finds that I had covered in a cotton fabric with a small fern pattern.  It sits in my grandson's nursery at my house. (By the way, those walls are chocolate brown.  Not the greatest picture.)

This is a more contemporary version consisting of cleaner, straighter lines and a little larger scale.  I'm more of the curvy persuasion myself, though!

If something seems missing in your life, maybe adding a delicious little slipper chair to your decor will brighten things up.  You never know!

Photo and vendor credits: 1. Suzanne Kasler Interiors, 2.Suzanne Kasler for Hickory chair, 3.Williams Sonoma, 4. Lee Industries 5. through Carol Raley Interiors 6. through Carol Raley Interiors 7. personal collection 8. Williams-Sonoma 9. personal collection 10. Williams-Sonoma

Confessions of a Chair Junkie

Chairs draw me like a moth to a flame. I simply cannot explain their allure. Maybe it's because they sometimes have arms that seem to beckon, or maybe it's their almost human form, but one thing is for sure, I have been enamored of chairs since I was a little girl. Especially french ones. Whenever I spot one my heart skips a beat. I could even go out on a limb to say this addiction may be the underlying reason I went into design. After all, the reality is all those chairs couldn't live with me in my house, so I needed a way to find homes for all the chairs I loved.

Once when I was a young mother, I heard there was a good yard sale in the community. It wasn't right by my house, but I thought a little walk would be an added bonus. Once at the sale, my eagle eye scanned the offerings. The usual tables of glassware, old crockpots, clothes everwhere. Just when I thought it was a bust, there it was. Underneath a stack of folded jeans, I spotted my prize. Covered in black Sparvar and a really bad black naugahyde upholstery job was a little chair saying to me "Help, save me!". So I asked the lady what her best price was, and she she said, "Oh, that old chair? I just put it there to hold the jeans. I'll take a couple a bucks for it."

Well now, can you just picture me trying not to do the happy dance while digging two crumpled up bills out of my jeans pocket? The lady looked at me like I was an idiot and she had made the smartest sale ever. Here I go, down the street with my black-on-black naugahyde chair, balanced upside down on my head, Kenya style. My husband watched me come up the driveway and when I proudly set down my fabulous find, he just shook his head. "Great, just what we need. Another chair."

So that is the story of just one quest to find my fix. Here is my little chair, unburdened of the black paint and wearing one of the many fabrics it's had since the day it came home with me. I feel like maybe I am the Mother Teresa of chairs.