Dining Chairs

Side chairs, carvers, cowhide chairs and shells:

the armless side chair is the default, because it slides under the table and leaves room for elbows, and the parsons chair, upholstered over straight legs, is the usual partner for a modern table. The carver, the armed dining chair, adds arms and a fuller back and normally takes the two ends of the table; deeper armed seats meant for the living room are in armchairs. The Azuero cowhide chair is a different object: a wooden frame with tanned hide stretched and tacked over seat and back. Eames-style shells and metal bistro chairs are light and wipe clean, but none of these is built for a day at a laptop; for that, an office chair is the better buy.

Dining chair height against the table apron:

what decides whether a chair works is the gap between its seat and the underside of the table frame, not the tabletop. Around 30 cm leaves room for your thighs. It matters most with a carver, whose arms can hit the apron and stop the chair tucking in. With small children, vinyl or wipeable microfibre outlasts linen, and a drop-in seat beats a fully upholstered parsons chair, because the pad unscrews and can be recovered with a staple gun when it stains.

New dining chairs one by one, and why sets keep their value:

a new upholstered dining chair from a Panamanian furniture store runs from about $90 for a plain one to $250 or more for a better-finished one, and carvers sit near $350, so six chairs can cost more than the table. A cowhide chair from an Azuero workshop often costs less than the plainest store chair. Used, the count matters more than the label: a matched set of four or six sells, because that is what buyers search for, while a single odd chair is hard to move at almost any price. Hardwood frames and Azuero cowhide chairs hold their value; flat-pack chairs lose most of theirs once they wobble.

A used chair’s back joint, seat and leather:

sit down, lean back hard and rock from side to side. Dining chairs give first where the back legs meet the seat rails, so look there for a gap, a crack or fresh glue. On a flat-pack chair a wobble is often just loose bolts; if a bolt spins without biting, the thread in the wood is gone. On a glued chair the joint has to come apart and be reglued, and a screw driven through it only hides the problem. On a cowhide chair, press the seat. Hide that has sagged into a hammock, cracked from drying out or pulled away from its tacks needs replacing, and that is a workshop job. On upholstered chairs the front edge of the seat wears first. On a shell chair, look where the legs screw into the plastic, since cracks start there. An Eames chair sold as original should carry the Herman Miller or Vitra mark underneath; without it, pay a replica price.

Listing a set of four, six or eight dining chairs:

put the number in the title and photograph the chairs together in a row, then one from the side, the underside of a seat and every stain or loose joint up close. Give the seat height and overall height in centimetres, the frame material and the upholstery, and say whether the matching table is going too; if it is, list it under dining tables. Selling cowhide chairs, say whether the hide is original and roughly how old the chairs are, because buyers after Azuero work ask both. And if you are the one going to see a set, take the height of your own table’s apron with you: a set two centimetres too tall for it is a set that ends up listed again.