An interpretation of the chair on Berlin F 2285

                     Ancient Greek chairs were made from wood. The sweeping curves, and on occasion the extreme bends found in their designs, can't have been made by steam bending the wood alone. They were able to make beautiful S bends in timber that had quite a large cross section. At first sight it is difficult to see how they made the bends, particularly for the rear leg and upright that holds the back rest. It seems that the most probable explanation is that they carefully selected the shape that they required, from the trunk of a tree plus an appropriately angled branch.

The method they used to make the upholstery is fairly speculative. The pictures of chairs on Ancient Greek ceramics often have black lines on the side rail that depict linen cord that has been wrapped around the side rail. Evidence that cord was used in furniture can be found in some texts, for example in Lysistrata by Aristophanes and Thucydides.

A way of threading the linen cord is shown in the picture on this page. It shows cord (unfortunatly not linen cord), about 2.5mm thick, on a preliminary model with the holes spaced 15mm and 30mm apart plus two holes for each 30mm space to create the weaved pattern. I tried other methods but these proved to be laborious and not very satisfactory. Cord has the natural advantage of being able to bend and twist, so it is possible that the Ancient Greeks threaded or twisted cords around each other in imaginative ways when making their seats. The Theater of Dionysos has chairs carved out of marble that also may give some indication of how they wove their seats.






To make a leg and upright for the above chair, a carfuly selected branch and trunk of a tree would need to be used.











Short history of Ancient Greek Chairs