Chair of the Gods

Aside from lying in your bed, how do you spend most of your time? Sitting. Where does one sit? On a chair. It’s time to become an informed citizen, and to arm yourself with knowledge the next time you choose to transition to a sedentary position. Bwog presents: Chair Reviews, Part 1.

Ah, the Butler Reference Room study chair—Zeus in the pantheon of Columbia seating. The muscular curves are carved from hardwood, and blackened with paint and lacquer as if heading to war. These chairs provide agreeable support for one’s ass and back, yet the rigid design yields a confident perch from which one may ponder the day’s work. Though these chairs fill the Reference Room (and most of Butler), one specifically served superbly today, and it deserves praise.

The chair in question is located at the first desk on the left (as one enters the Reference Room from the Circulation Desk); on the Eastward facing side of the table, closest to the towering wall of windows.

It is positioned such that the occupant may survey all who enter the space, while remaining well outside the cheap seats at either end of the large hall. Some may find the constant entrances and exits distracting; to those, I suggest remaining at home. The library is the place to see and be seen; to judge and to be judged. In that vein, when safely established upon this throne, all others become mere supplicants, wishing they had left a minute earlier to grab a good spot. To 209 with those plebes!

Despite a shared design, Butler chairs maintain subtle, yet critical, differences—the result of poor maintenance (this is Columbia, after all) or newer models replacing older. This model is furnished with a dark brown seat and arm rests to match. The back rest is slightly creaky, and the left arm is noticeably loose. These imperfections evoke a richly humane quality about the chair. However perfect the intent and blueprint design, the chair is imperfect in its corporeal form—as are we all.

This chair is without a doubt one of the very best, as well as a member of the most noble family of campus seating. This chair is the standard by which all others must be judged. The word “superlative” is genuinely appropriate.

Final rank: 9.5/10