At the Museum of Vancouver, chairs hold years of rich stories within wood grain and vinyl upholstery

Deep-Seated Histories exhibition features 150 seats from the museum’s permanent collection, while the show Future Makers displays new designs by KPU students

By emily lyth

Canopy Chair designed by Aidan Fornier-Hanlon, with Ryan Hope and Zhiyang Wang as co-designers, on display as part of Future Makers. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Vancouver

Theatre Under the Stars director’s chair, circa 1950–53, on display as part of Deep-Seated Histories. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Vancouver

Deep-Seated Histories: Chairs from the Collection and Future Makers: Chairs by New Designers are now on display at the Museum of Vancouver

THE HUMBLE CHAIR, in all its forms, is a central part of daily life. Think about the blue vinyl seats on the 99-B Line, or the high-backed ergonomic chairs that dominate office spaces, or the cushy leather recliners poised in front of television sets. How about the weathered wooden park benches that serve as resting points during morning walks? Or the rickety metal bar stools where patrons sip pints at the neighbourhood pub?

The Museum of Vancouver is acknowledging all the colourful stories that chairs can tell with the new exhibition Deep-Seated Histories: Chairs from the Collection. A total of 150 seats, selected from the museum’s permanent collection of about 250, are on display in the exhibition space. Each one provides a different bit of insight into Vancouver’s cultural, social, and industrial evolution.

As curator Denise Fong tells Stir during a tour of the exhibition, these chairs raise thoughts around what most folks consider to be mundane activities, like eating breakfast or commuting to work.

“We put these objects up here on display, but they’re also such important day-to-day objects,” Fong says. “They’re so integrated into our lives that sometimes we don’t even really pay attention to these so-called ordinary objects. So we just hope the show gives people a kind of new perspective on chairs and seating.”

As visitors step into the museum space, they’ll be greeted by a map of the chairs. They’re grouped into 14 clusters; one platform is devoted to work chairs, for instance, while another holds children’s chairs. Some of the pieces date back to the 18th century—including the oldest adult chair in the collection, the Barkley Chair. Captain Charles Barkley and his wife, Frances Barkley, who were European explorers, bought the semicircular seat in China with profits they gained from conducting sea-otter fur trades with the Indigenous people of Yuquot on Nootka Island. They toted the chair along with them on the rest of their world travels. It is a reminder of Canada’s colonial history.

“It’s quite amazing to see the condition they’re in,” Fong says of the centuries-old furniture pieces on display here. Though the Barkley Chair’s rattan seat, which is made from Malacca cane, has caved in slightly from decades of use, the sleek bamboo spindles framing its back are still fully intact.

Barkley Chair, circa 1750–75. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Vancouver

“Some of these objects have lived an interesting life.”

Arts enthusiasts will definitely want to check out a section of Deep-Seated Histories that’s devoted to theatre chairs. There are two conjoined folding seats from the now-demolished Pantages Theatre, a vaudeville and film joint that opened in 1907 on the Downtown Eastside. Wide upholstered cushions in robin’s-egg blue are bordered by a similarly coloured wooden trim with ornate details carved into it. Black-and-white number plaques are screwed into the top of each one. You can see chips in the paint where people folded the seats up and down over the years, and the worn wooden armrests allow you to imagine viewers resting their limbs as they watched stars like Charlie Chaplin and Babe Ruth grace the stage.

“Some of these objects have lived an interesting life,” Fong shares. “They’ve been used as different forms of seating in different places, and then somehow they end up back at the museum.” The Pantages chairs were transferred to the now-closed Trail High School in the Kootenays before the MOV acquired them. Aside from some minor scuffs and stains on the fabric, they’re incredibly well-preserved.

Next to the Pantages seats is a claw-footed piano stool that once sat inside the Colonial Theatre on Granville Street, where silent movies used to screen. Composed of white wood and a faded, floral-embroidered cushion, it’s a stark departure from the simple black stools and benches that appear in piano halls nowadays.

Another cool addition is a director’s folding chair once used by Theatre Under the Stars at the open-air Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park. Made of dark green vinyl on a metal base, it would have been constructed sometime between 1950 and 1953.

“It was quite interesting to see—as we were doing the research—all the historical photographs,” Fong says, adding that “the vibrant cultural life that was in Vancouver over a century ago is still thriving.”

Joe Fortes’s Morris chair, circa 1900–22. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Vancouver

Among the other seats on display in the exhibition is a Morris chair used by legendary Vancouver lifeguard and swimming instructor Joe Fortes. The mechanically adjustable recliner, painted black and faded with use, once sat in his English Bay cottage. Though its original cushion was lost at some point in time, it’s displayed at the MOV with a brand-new grey one so that visitors can picture how it would have looked in its prime.

Another really eye-catching item is a towering leather night-watchman’s chair from the Ship Inn in Greenwich, England (a business that was bombed during the Second World War). The porter’s chair, which effectively has a huge hood over the seat, would have been used in the 1800s by inn staff screening visitors at the door while being sheltered from the cold. And nearby is a piece of immense historical significance, a chair from the 1860s in which judge Matthew Baillie Begbie, the first chief justice of British Columbia, presided over trials. Begbie played a harrowing role in establishing colonial rule and suppressing Indigenous laws. His black-stained wooden chair is tall, dark, and imposing, with a thoroughly worn seat.

Futuristic takes on chairs

Elsewhere at the Museum of Vancouver, chairs are in the spotlight in an entirely different way. Future Makers: Chairs by New Designers, an exhibition created in collaboration with Kwantlen Polytechnic University, features 15 original chair prototypes by students at the Wilson School of Design. Each seat is made from decades-old mahogany extracted from Nicaragua and Guatemala; though it was intended for use in the marine industry, the wood was neglected for years before it was eventually donated to the MOV. The resulting exhibition raises concerns about how harvesting tropical hardwood has contributed hugely to deforestation across Central America. It’s also an acknowledgement of the responsibility that future designers hold to work sustainably.

A-Chair designed by Jodh Sidhu, on display as part of Future Makers. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Vancouver

There is some truly stunning craftsmanship on display. Canopy Chair, designed by Aidan Fornier-Hanlon with co-designers Ryan Hope and Zhiyang Wang, features a woven seat supported by a smooth, rounded frame. Fornier-Hanlon was inspired by watching the shadows of a monstera plant splay across their kitchen wall with the setting sun, a moment that reminded them of tree canopies. At the MOV, light shines through the woven seat, creating a web of shadows against the stark white platform it’s positioned on.

The Friendship Chair by designers Laurina Austin-Seade, Elizabeth Neely, and Thomas Schratz—perhaps more of a bench than a chair—comes with a unique concept. It’s made of thick slats that can be pulled apart from both sides so that the seat can be extended into a structure for multiple people to sit on; alternatively, the two sides can be pushed together, condensing the bench into a seat for small spaces.

Designer Alex Vogt’s Bauhaus-inspired Box Chair is all bold lines and squared-off edges; though minimalistic, it holds a strong presence in the space. And A-Chair, designed by Jodh Sidhu, stands out for its tall back that tapers into a sharp point.

Just as Future Makers offers insight into how the next wave of designers is approaching furniture-making, Deep-Seated Histories captures the evolution of design up to this point. So although going to the museum to look at chairs may sound somewhat dull at first, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Rest assured that there are all kinds of stories hidden within these sleek wooden armrests and tarnished metal legs.

As Fong puts it: “It’s kind of interesting—the more you look into it, the more you recognize, wow, there’s actually a lot going on with chairs.”  

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