Let’s Talk About…. Boudoir Chairs
Image credit: wealdentimes.co.uk
Valerie the House here again! :)
Now, nothing screams art deco more than these little wonders of a chair. For centuries since they were invented until since I was build in the 30s until now, it seems like these chairs have had several names. Some call them slipper chairs, while some others call them boudoir chairs. I personally like the latter.
Funnily enough though, according to an old article in The New York Times, art deco designers actually opted to modernize the chairs’ look by eliminating their Victorian-style brocades, velvets, and fringes; however nowadays it seems like the fringey ones are back in full force completing the look of art deco homes. The extravagance of these chairs pair nicely with the more masculine lines and shapes of the art deco style. We call it a marriage.
My owner, Lady Owner, has long noticed with her shimmering eagle eyes that these chairs and their pretty fringes are nesting comfortably in many of the Soho House interior photographs (she is understandably obsessed with Soho House, please forgive her). Like these examples below:
A bedroom of Kettner’s Townhouse by Soho House in London. Image credit: architonic.com .
The designers behind the Soho House. Image credit: houseandgarden.co.uk
As we can see here, boudoir chairs can look amazing absolutely anywhere, even though the name sort of makes one imagine a bedroom and a beautiful lady. That article in The New York Times also mentions that the chair was called slipper chair because women sat on it to put on their slippers (in the bedroom). Until a designer named Billy Baldwin redesigned the chair in 1950s to fit outside the bedroom too.
Anyway, it’s safe to say that Lady Owner was craving for a boudoir chair for awhile. She also knew that they. Are. Very. Expensive. Because you know, antiques. So you can imagine how psyched she was when one day she spotted a boudoir chair in a secondhand shop in the city center of Dordrecht, when she was just walking passed by the shop without any intention to buy a chair at all, and it was also only 50 euro instead of 5000 (no kidding, just look it up online).
Well, like many of us, LO associates the boudoir chair with a bedroom, so she put it in the bedroom. Here she is, the chair, gracing a corner of the primary bedroom:
Blue walls! Blue walls!
What a beauty, right? But the best thing about these chairs is they often come with hidden storage. Just lift the cushion and voila, you somehow have extra compartments to put your… ehm… slippers, like Lady Owner did. *wink
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