Looking at my blog, one could conclude that I’ve got an unhealthy obsession with chairs. I assure you that this is not the case. Leather divans? Venetian mirrors? Decanters? Yes. Chairs, not so much.

I have, however, one specific chair-obsession (perfectly healthy, though) and that’s my love for yellow armchairs. As with many things in my life, it’s all the fault of a book. There is a yellow armchair in Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes*. The armchair in question belongs to Charles Ephrussi, de Waal’s forefather, a fabulously wealthy banker and art lover and model for Swann in Proust. As soon as I read the book, I of course wanted the chair.

And now I’ve got one!** If you’ve read my Big In Japan post, you have already partly seen it, but it deserves to be presented in its full glory. Or as full as I can capture with my iPhone in the Brussels non-existent light. This one is a modern, streamlined take on the yellow armchair genre by an Estonian company OOT-OOT (I picked the fabric myself). In addition to being a beautiful piece of design, it’s cheerful and comfortable and improves my mood every time I look at it. I say look, because I hardly ever sit there these days, as my youngest sister never leaves that chair.

The solution is, of course, obvious. I need another, old-fashioned one in pale yellow leather for the library room that I’m going to have. And a slightly mustard-y yellow, seventies-inspired one would be cool, too. I only need to find a suitable house for it.

*I highly recommend the book. It’s part family history (and what a family that is), part memoir, part a meditation on art, part a chase after the mysterious netsuke. It also involves fin de siecle Vienna.
** I highly recommend yellow armchairs as well.