Every Chic Home Has an Armchair—These 5 Are the Best

Max Hurd is a Who What Wear UK editor-in-residence and London-based art director, tastemaker, interior stylist and creative consultant. A collaborator and advisor to leading luxury brands including Manolo Blahnik, Farfetch, Asprey, Cartier, H&M and Patrón Tequila, his exuberant aesthetic—which he describes as “Oscar Wilde meets Marie-Antoinette by way of a Brazilian bordello”—enables him to curate, write and create across interiors and culture.

I would hazard a guess that, as you are reading this, you are parked, perched or plonked comfortably in a chair. What kind of chair is irrelevant. The point is that you are sitting in one. We often take chairs for granted or see them as purely utilitarian, yet they form such an essential stitch in the fabric of our lives. Their presence in our homes is often overlooked, but shockingly, chairs only really became part of the furniture, so to speak, 300 short years ago. Before that, we were a species that sat on stools or benches, with even the wealthiest individuals having limited access to backed seating.

It was not until the 17th century that we decided to do something about the orthopaedic harm we were committing every time we wanted to sit down, and not until the 18th century that we considered making them comfortable through upholstery. Finally, in the 19th century, they became mass-produced and commonplace.