美国国家公共电台 NPR Better Sit Down For This One: An Exciting Book About The History Of Chairs

Better Sit Down For This One: An Exciting Book About The History Of Chairs 

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Witold Rybczynski loves chairs. He loves everything about them - their design, their history, their sultry silhouette², I suppose. His new book is called "Now I Sit Me Down." NPR's Elizabeth Blair takes the opportunity to pay tribute to (laughter) the bottom's best-known resting place.

ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE³: People get attached to their chairs. Pee-wee Herman named his Chairry.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PAUL REUBENS: (Singing, as Pee-wee Herman) Hey Chairry, I love to sit on you.

LEXY FRIDELL: (Singing, as Chairry) Hey Pee-wee, I love it when you do.

BLAIR: Archie Bunker loved his wingback on "All In The Family." The rolling desk chairs on the sitcom⁴ "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" are practically characters. Chairs are so basic and yet so diverse. They rise, roll, recline and spin, as Maggie Smith found out in "Downton Abbey" when she sat on a swivel chair.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DOWNTON ABBEY")

MAGGIE SMITH: (As Violet Crawley) Another modern brain wave?

DAN STEVENS: (As Matthew Crawley) Not very modern - they were invented by Thomas Jefferson.

BLAIR: Thomas Jefferson collected chairs. The chair has been evolving for centuries. And that's partly what fascinates Witold Rybczynski. When he writes, he sits in an old swivel chair he bought at a flea⁵ market about 40 years ago.

WITOLD RYBCZYNSKI: It leans back. It tilts⁶. It's a wooden chair. And this isn't just me. This is also whoever owned it before me.

BLAIR: The wear in the arm?

RYBCZYNSKI: The wear and tear is kind of nice in an old chair.

BLAIR: We get tired. We need to sit down. But when did some humans decide the ground wasn't good enough? Rybczynski says the earliest records of people sitting on chairs are Egyptian tomb paintings and ancient Greek art. The oldest representation he found is a sculpture in the Metropolitan⁷ Museum of Art.

RYBCZYNSKI: And it was of a musician, a harpist. But he was sitting on a chair, simply a four-legged - we would call it, like, a kitchen chair.

BLAIR: It was from around 3,000 B.C.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RYBCZYNSKI: The striking thing about the Greeks is that the chairs become very democratic very quickly. There are women in chairs. There are gods in chairs. There are musicians. So it clearly was a tool that was used by many people.

BLAIR: Mainly in the Western world. But that democratic thing didn't last. Fast forward to Europe in the Middle Ages. Most people didn't get chairs at all.

RYBCZYNSKI: They just sat on whatever was around because they couldn't afford it. And you had to be really rich to afford something like a chair. If they were lucky, they sat on a bench. That was about the height of sitting.

BLAIR: The man in the chair has the power - the chairman. Rybczynski believes the oldest kind of chair was not a throne but a folding chair.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOLDING CHAIR")

REGINA SPEKTOR: (Singing) Come and open up your folding chair next to me.

RYBCZYNSKI: There are lots of occasions where you want to walk somewhere. And then you want to sit.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FOLDING CHAIR")

SPEKTOR: (Singing) My feet are buried in the sand. And there's a breeze.

BLAIR: Legs, sometimes arms, a seat and a back - a chair sounds pretty easy to make. But Rybczynski says, far from it.

RYBCZYNSKI: They're like little buildings in a way because they have to be beautiful. But they have to be practical. And they actually have to be very structurally⁹ sound.

BLAIR: Architects and designers have worked hard to refine these buildings for our bottoms. I asked Rybczynski who among them really pushed the chair forward. First, he says, would be Michael Thonet, a German-Austrian furniture maker¹⁰.

In the 1830s, he invented the Vienna bentwood chair, those wooden chairs with rounded cane¹¹ backs. Rybczynski says Thonet simplified the process of bending wood. He turned the craft into an industry. Rybczynski also singles out a husband-and-wife team that began designing chairs in the 1940s.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: And the designer Charles Eames has become almost a household word.

BLAIR: Charles and Ray Eames built chairs with seats that were shiny, smooth shells made of wood or plastic, as Charles Eames explained in this interview on NBC in 1956.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

CHARLES EAMES: The object was to take a material, which was a high-performance material developed during the war, and try to make it available to householders at non-military prices.

RYBCZYNSKI: They moved furniture from the traditional appearance to something very modern. They used metal and plywood. And they're very beautiful chairs that are still popular and sold.

BLAIR: You might be sitting on an Eames-inspired chair right now. Or you might be sitting on what Rybczynski calls the ultimate descendant of the Eames shell chair, the one-piece plastic chair, those cheap, stackable patio¹² chairs. Rybczynski says they might not be pretty. But they solved a huge structural⁸ problem.

RYBCZYNSKI: The challenge for chairs was always the joint¹³ because when you sit in a chair, the joints¹⁴ move. And eventually, they get loose. And the chair starts to get wobbly. And the plastic chair is one piece. So it gets rid of the joints. And it just - that's why they rarely break.

BLAIR: Rybczynski believes the history of the chair says a lot about not just trends in design but also social values. He also finds their endurance pretty remarkable¹⁵.

RYBCZYNSKI: The problem of sitting is universal.

BLAIR: Witold Rybczynski's new book is called "Now I Sit Me Down: From Klismos To Plastic Chair: A Natural History." Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 silhouette   

n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓

参考例句：

• I could see its black silhouette against the evening sky.我能看到夜幕下它黑色的轮廓。
• I could see the silhouette of the woman in the pickup.我可以见到小卡车的女人黑色半身侧面影。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 sitcom   

n.情景喜剧，（广播、电视的）系列幽默剧

参考例句：

• This sitcom is produced in cooperation with Hong Kong TV.这部连续剧是同香港电视台联合制作的。
• I heard that a new sitcom is coming out next season.我听说下一季会推出一个新的情境喜剧。

5 flea   

n.跳蚤

参考例句：

• I'll put a flea in his ear if he bothers me once more.如果他再来打扰的话，我就要对他不客气了。
• Hunter has an interest in prowling around a flea market.亨特对逛跳蚤市场很感兴趣。

6 tilts   

（意欲赢得某物或战胜某人的）企图，尝试( tilt的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• As the kitten touches it, it tilts at the floor. 它随着击碰倾侧，头不动，眼不动，还呆呆地注视着地上。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译
• The two writers had a number of tilts in print. 这两位作家写过一些文章互相攻击。

7 metropolitan   

adj.大城市的，大都会的

参考例句：

• Metropolitan buildings become taller than ever.大城市的建筑变得比以前更高。
• Metropolitan residents are used to fast rhythm.大都市的居民习惯于快节奏。

8 structural   

adj.构造的，组织的，建筑（用）的

参考例句：

• The storm caused no structural damage.风暴没有造成建筑结构方面的破坏。
• The North American continent is made up of three great structural entities.北美大陆是由三个构造单元组成的。

9 structurally   

在结构上

参考例句：

• The house roof was (structurally) unsound. 这屋顶（结构）不牢固。
• Pinhole on shot-hole damage is never structurally significant. 针孔和蛀洞所造成的危害对结构的影响不大。

10 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

11 cane   

n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的

参考例句：

• This sugar cane is quite a sweet and juicy.这甘蔗既甜又多汁。
• English schoolmasters used to cane the boys as a punishment.英国小学老师过去常用教鞭打男学生作为惩罚。

12 patio   

n.庭院，平台

参考例句：

• Suddenly, the thought of my beautiful patio came to mind. I can be quiet out there,I thought.我又忽然想到家里漂亮的院子，我能够在这里宁静地呆会。
• They had a barbecue on their patio on Sunday.星期天他们在院子里进行烧烤。

13 joint   

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合

参考例句：

• I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
• We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。

14 joints   

接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语）

参考例句：

• Expansion joints of various kinds are fitted on gas mains. 各种各样的伸缩接头被安装在煤气的总管道上了。
• Expansion joints of various kinds are fitted on steam pipes. 各种各样的伸缩接头被安装在蒸气管道上了。

15 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。