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Was sitting uncomfortable before modern chairs?
Jr.
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have been wondering about this, specifically how people sat comfortably before more modern chairs like cushiony armchairs and couches were invented.
If you will notice this is a collection of different chairs one is an old couch, one is a chair the british sit in during a coronation, and two are chairs that are in art museums because they're supposedly great chairs the thing I do not understand is how people regularly sat in chairs like this. They are not comfortable chairs they are hard and the back and seat connect at a 90 degree angle which is just not a comfortable way to sit in addition there is no padding on most of these chairs and in the case of the couch there isn't much padding and it would hurt to lean back sure we have some modern chairs that are kind of similar but they're mostly just used for things like dinners where you maybe sit for 30 minutes nobody is trying to read books in these kinds of chairs or have social hour in them. How did people sit in these chairs for hours back then?
If you will notice this is a collection of different chairs one is an old couch, one is a chair the british sit in during a coronation, and two are chairs that are in art museums because they're supposedly great chairs the thing I do not understand is how people regularly sat in chairs like this. They are not comfortable chairs they are hard and the back and seat connect at a 90 degree angle which is just not a comfortable way to sit in addition there is no padding on most of these chairs and in the case of the couch there isn't much padding and it would hurt to lean back sure we have some modern chairs that are kind of similar but they're mostly just used for things like dinners where you maybe sit for 30 minutes nobody is trying to read books in these kinds of chairs or have social hour in them. How did people sit in these chairs for hours back then?
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Other old chairs that have still survived hundreds of years are found in old churches, which has the same idea
But sitting in them would literally not have crossed someone's mind before that.
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Puritans especially loved to be miserable
I will take this opportunity to plug Whit, an undeservedly obscure Iain Banks novel about a cult whose members must carry a wooden board around at all times in case the fallen, sinful world tries to make them sit on a decadent plush cushion.
Pollution from the industrial revolution caused our ass genes to mutant into flatter, less comfortable rears.
In our house Nathaniel sits on a spike!
He was a friend of the Beastie Boys or something.
Nobody survives time.
Wooden chairs are the skeletons of the furniture world
Large posterior are most desirable, and I shall not utter an untruth about them.
The thing is, and this was reinforced when we'd do the cultural tours of the palaces and castles that exhibited how they used to be laid out where literally only the lord would get a chair with one (1) single armrest, is that if you grow up sitting this way you're probably gonna have the natural muscle development to find it comfortable and chill. As soft westerners this wasn't us though, not in the least.
the bones are their money
The backs of the pew leaned forward and were all made from extremely tough wood. The cushions barely did anything and you felt the bones of your ass meet the hard wood.
Basically designed to make being in church as tortious as possible. Very puritan, considering this is an Episcopal church
That's why to this day cashiers are required to stand.
that's anglicans, episcopalians are anglicans that are chill
As a third generation Recovering-Catholic, gonna have to emphatically disagree about chillness re: Episcopalians
I think the point of uncomfortable pews is psychological: to build up a tolerance for discomfort, to associate spiritual goodness with tolerating discomfort and to reward submissive kneeling with relief (hence the cushioned knee rests), and maybe to encourage us pay attention to the sermon by discouraging us from enjoying our seat.
I sometimes prefer solid, old-school chairs for sitting, but I suffer from something akin to PTSD, so I prefer hard surfaces. (I related to what Captain America said to Falcon in The Winter Soldier about mattresses being too soft.)
Might increase turn-out.