Design for Three Slender Chairs 1800 - 1850

This pencil drawing, "Design for Three Slender Chairs" resides at the Met but was made by an unknown artist. Though the maker’s identity is a mystery, we can still look at how the objects portrayed speak to historical and social contexts. Consider the design of these chairs – slender, decorative, and seemingly delicate. Ask yourself: who were these chairs made for? What kind of body is meant to sit in them? We can imagine the upward mobility of the middle classes and their aspirations to wealth. The chairs are not simply functional items, they are aspirational objects. They speak to ideas of status, of the performance of femininity, and a certain kind of domestic life. These chairs reflect the values of their time, and even today, question our relationships with objects of desire.