In her new book, The Perfectly Imperfect Home, former editor of Domino magazine Deborah Needleman, outlines her "10 elements of style," one of which is the use of an odd or spare chair. She explains, While an odd chair is useful, it is not primarily for sitting. It is desirable primarily for its amusing demeanor, making it more like a piece of sculpture in the shape of a chair....The odd chair is the most individual of all. It is frequently diminutive, unusual-looking and solitary. (Think a little tufted Victorian thing, or a gothic-style wood chair or a child's chair pulled up to the coffee table.)
I couldn't agree with Deborah more. And another thing that is so wonderful about the random extra dining room chair is that it can sometimes be snagged at a discount because so many people are interested in buying a matching set!
Here are some rooms that make creative use of the odd chair.
FIRST ROW
• Perfect Grey. Slightly beat up gilded antique chair paired with modern art. And to the right, an image from 79 Ideas. Here two odd Cherner chairs flank an ornate antique console table. Really, I will do anything to include images of the Cherner chairs!
• Sanctuary. Beautiful use of two spare antique dining room chairs.
• Another spare chair. Home Life.
• A lovely little scene from photographer Mel Yates in Desire to Inspire.
• Here a random slipcovered chair adorns the hall in Dede Pratesi's 17th-century family villa in Tuscany from Architectural Digest.
SECOND ROW
• A little yellow vintage chair serves as a table of sorts in the hallway of Laura's Patchwork Style Apartment.
• Absolutely Beautiful Things.
• Noemi's Romantic Biedemeier Apartment in Berlin. Here a single upholstered balloon back chair looks lovely on its own.
Images: As credited above.
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I love the first (double) photo! Most of the other examples, while more "normal" to my life are also less interesting.
I love interesting little chairs and have used them this way forever. A couple of observations...
While I agree they function as sculpture, and are seldom actually used, believe me when I say the minute you use a fragile antique chair "just for pretty", THAT is when somebody will suddenly decide to have a seat on it! So, either avoid non-functional chairs or make them psychologically inaccessible as with the pile of books on the seat, above.
Also, I have found interesting single chairs that sometimes need a little work (paint, seat repair, whatever) at my favorite flea market for as little as a dollar! My VERY favorite single chair is a $20 hand carved teak piece (from Asia, I presume) with lots of scrollwork and pale yellow silk upholstery including double cording... it needs re-upholstery, but even stained as it is, it's really fun and petite -- makes a great "writing table" chair in my bedroom (elevating that to "boudoir"!)
So, we're now trying to re-brand the occasional chair as the "spare chair". There are no new ideas.
I have the dreaded extra dining chairs syndrome - generally born from the fact that my diminutive dining space can only comfortable hold 4 chairs on a daily basis. I have been thinking about nailing the two extra chairs together to make a franken-"dining bench" but my partner is vehemently against it.
@kaboombox
What actually is an occasional ___? With no formal understanding, I've formed the impression that occasional tables are basically accent tables, aka anything that's not a dining table (or a desk, I guess), and (kind of by extension) occasional chairs are like the chairs you have in the seldom-used parlour (so not a dining chair, and not the chair you'd put alongside the comfortable couch). In which case the spare chair here wouldn't qualify, unless all that is totally off after all....
(I suppose that makes my impression of an occasional table more broad than an occasional chair. Not sure why that is. I guess if they were exactly equivalent I would say any chair that's not a dining chair or a desk chair or a recliner would be an occasional chair, and this spare chair would qualify....)