I Can’t Stop Thinking About This Gorgeous Mid-Century Modern Chair (It’s So Cozy!)

As a young-adult novelist, I’m frequently in the library’s teen section. Libraries are a surprising source of design inspiration, and it was at the Austin Central Library that I discovered the chair that would go on to change my life.

In the teen section, there are approximately 20 identical dark pink upholstered chairs. Their shape is unusual, sort of resembling a backward letter N, and they have neither legs nor arms. The first time I sat in one, I thought, “This is the most comfortable reading chair in the entire world.”

Immediately after, a librarian told me to get up. While adults are allowed to browse books in the APL’s teen section, we’re not allowed to linger there. In theory, this is a good policy. Personally, however, I just really wanted to keep sitting in that chair.

And that’s how my infatuation with the chair of my dreams started.

When the COVID-19 lockdown began and I was confined to my apartment for months on end, I became infatuated with this chair. Now inaccessible to me on every level, it sat in the no-adults section of a closed building. 

The seating in my apartment was predictable and miserable — folding wooden chairs, a hand-me-down couch, and a bed. By June 2020, I had sat on all of those surfaces for so many hours, I couldn’t take it anymore. The way I saw it, there was only one solution to my problem.

I hunted down an online photo of the chair then emailed the library’s reader services department. “I don’t have a research question, exactly,” I explained, “but could you tell me where you got this?” A librarian responded factually, helpfully, and non-judgmentally — she’s a librarian, after all. The chair was the Pierre Paulin “Tongue Chair,” by Artifort.

“Great!” I thought, naively. “I will order myself a Tongue Chair.” A quick Google search informed me that for $5,500 plus shipping and handling, the chair could be mine. 

I learned that Pierre Paulin was a famous French furniture designer. His Tongue Chair is considered one of the great works of mid-century modern design. It’s in the MoMA. No wonder I’d thought this thing was comfortable. It’s a literal work of art. Surely, like me, you’re wondering how a library could afford 20 of these fabulous chairs. As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one questioning this.

This Reddit post pointed out that public buildings not only receive millions of dollars for renovations (which is when these chairs were added to the APL), but they also often use that money to invest in designer furniture that is comfortable, pretty, and long-lasting. 

Obviously, I do not have thousands of dollars to spend on a chair. My job is writing books for teenagers, and I’m not Stephanie Meyer. Furthermore, I have two cats. If I want to see $6,000 destroyed, there are more interesting ways to do that than to let a cat sharpen her claws on it. 

Fortunately, Overstock offered a Tongue Chair dupe at a tenth of the price ($535 is still a significant chunk of change for me to spend on a single item, but it’s a price point I could accept). A masked FedEx driver delivered the faux Tongue Chair to my door. I sat in it. I hated it. It might have looked like my chair, but in truth it wasn’t quite right. It was to my chair as a scarecrow is to a human being: It will fool you only from afar.

I returned the dupe, but I was haunted by a nagging question: Was the Overstock chair genuinely worse than the real thing, or was I only perceiving it as worse? After all, due to lockdowns, it had been a long time since I’d last sat in the library’s chair. And I had never sat in it for longer than a couple of minutes at a time, due to my frustrating inability to pass as a high schooler. So when lockdowns ended, one of the first things I did was visit my chair. Guess what? It was still comfortable.

I moved on to the next reasonable step: Emailing the library facilities manager an impassioned plea for the opportunity to purchase a secondhand Tongue Chair. The facilities manager replied these were indeed wonderful chairs, and to assure me that if any harm were to come to them, the library would reupholster them.

Next, I cold-emailed Artifort. Might they have an old showroom piece, something dusty and torn and now in storage? They did not. But, much like everyone at the library, they were surprisingly friendly in their response to a random stranger who was absurdly interested in a chair.

Because, let me be clear, I’m well aware that this is way too much emotional energy to put into a piece of furniture. If I could sit in this chair in public without risking a librarian’s wrath, maybe I could get my fill that way. If I hadn’t injured my coccyx as a teenager, then maybe all chairs would seem the same. 

My mother suggested I steal a chair. While I appreciate her can-do mindset, that’s not happening. Regardless of whether I find thievery to be ethically objectionable, the fact is that I would get caught immediately. I haven’t exactly been subtle, and if a Tongue Chair goes missing from the Austin Public Library, I’d be the obvious suspect. And I doubt that the seating options in jail offer great lumbar support.

For now, I’m scouring the world for affordable secondhand Tongue Chairs. I haven’t found one yet, but in the process of looking, I have found so many other things. Thanks to ApartmentTherapy’s advice, I’ve been searching designer resale sites like 1stDibs and Chairish (both of which currently have a number of Tongue Chairs on offer, and indeed for only $14,292.64 plus shipping from the Netherlands, I could put an end to this hunt now).

I’ve discovered the breadth of astonishingly cheap used goods of all types — from furniture to jewelry, cars, pianos, and even medical mannequins — available through Public Surplus. While I have yet to see a Tongue Chair in here, it’s not impossible. After all, 20 of these chairs are owned by a public institution.

My hunt for a Tongue Chair has also led me into the world of estate sales. Locally, I’ve been checking out in-person sales run by Estate Services of Austin — again, no Tongue Chairs yet, but I have bought an adorable homemade chair with rainbow pompom detailing for $25. 

And then there’s the world of business liquidation sales! Grafe Auctions is regularly selling off the entire infrastructure from offices, restaurants, and stores for dirt-cheap. This would be more useful if I were looking to open my own supermarket than if I were looking for a single mid-century modern designer chair, but I do believe that someday there will be a liquidating business that had Tongue Chairs in it.

This quest has led me in so many interesting and unexpected directions, and I expect it will continue to do so until I finally find my chair or die — whichever comes first. I don’t expect that I will ever concede defeat, not any more than a hopeless romantic would determine, after five or 10 or 40 years of looking, that their soulmate is not out there.

I want this chair, obviously. But I can’t control whether that ever happens for me. The outcome is elusive, but the process is all mine. Regardless of whether I someday get the chair, I get the quest every day. And isn’t that, in and of itself, a beautiful design?