Found in Montpellier, this 19th-century chair is a chaise alsacienne, the regional plank chair made in Alsace on the eastern edge of France along the German border. The chair is built from solid wood, with a shaped back board, a trapezoidal plank seat, and four splayed legs that wedge through the seat at an angle. The cutout in the back is both decoration and function: it gave the back its silhouette and gave a hand somewhere to grip when the chair was lifted and moved. The trapezoidal seat, wider at the front than the back, was shaped to fit the heavy pleated skirts that Alsatian women wore from the 17th into the early 20th century. Sylvie places it in an entryway as the chair you sit on for a moment, the one that holds a coat more often than a person.
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