Bistro chairs at Café

Bistro chairs at Café Nemours, near the LouvreBistro chairs at Galerie Vivienne, 19th century shopping mallAs the architect Ludwig Mies van derRohe once said, “A chair is a very difficultobject. A skyscraper is almost easier.” Mieswould have known because he introducedwhat’s been called ‘the Platonic ideal ofthe chair’, aka the Barcelona chair, at the1929 Barcelona International Exposition.He fabricated it specifically for the SpanishKing Alfonso XIII and his wife, Ena, in casethey needed a rest while visiting the Germanpavilion, which he also designed.Mies drew his inspiration from an Egyptianfolding chair and a Roman folding stool. Butthere was a chair perhaps more comfortablethan anything the great minimalist Mies orhis Roman and Egyptian influences created.And it was introduced on a mass scale tothe fifteen million who visited the ExpositionUniverselle of 1867 in Paris.Sometimes also known as the no. 14 chair orthe Thonet (rhymes with bonnet), the bistrochair was originally designed by Germancabinet maker Michael Thonet. ‘Bistro’ maycome from the French bistraud, which moreor less translates to ‘little servant’, or morefancifully from the Russian bistro (spellingsvary), meaning ‘hurry’. The notion that itsorigin lies in the word ‘hurry’ comes fromthe 1814 occupation of Paris by France’senemies following Napolean’s Great Retreatfrom Moscow. The occupiers included theRussians who, according to the legend, foundbossing waiters to be a richly satisfying formof empowerment.It took Thonet years to bend wood justthe right way using steam to create theperfect design resulting in the bistro chair’simpeccable blend of form and function. Heheated half a dozen pieces of beechwoodwith steam, pressed the segments intocurved cast-iron molds where they driedin the desired easygoing shape. Comfortwas paramount, and woven palm or canewere ingeniously chosen for its upholstery,allowing spilled — and sometimes thrown —beverages, whether spilled by accident or inanger, to gracefully drain away, keeping theseat dry and your spirits high.The no. 14 chair won a coveted gold medalat the 1867 fair, and from that momenton its fame spread with the quickness of ameme. The Geppetto of this wood creationmay have been a craftsman from the RhineValley, but after winning the award in Paris(and helped by Thonet’s patent expiring in1869), the chair transformed into somethingquintessentially French, a kind of furnitureimmigrant who becomes more indigenousthan the native inhabitants themselves.Over the decades, the bistro chairhas proven its staying power withthe unavoidability of sunrise and thepermanence of wind. This masterpieceof the sedentary also became the world’svery first mass-produced furniture item,selling a jaw-dropping fifty million units by1930. Its appeal — like that of champagneand Roquefort cheese — extended farbeyond the borders of France. It wasn’t justlocal demand that fueled the bistro chairindustry’s growth. The seats soon found54 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 55