The Best Chair Is No Chair At All

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But Cranz concedes the chair's seductive charms. Unlike the more egalitarian bench, couch, or floor, the chair emphasizes the individual. Make its back tall enough and you've got a billboard perfect for a coat of arms or a rococo flourish. A business tycoon is a chairman, not a sofaman; professors hold chairs, not stools.

Clearly, chairs do matter. Providing one for a guest conveys compassion. Throwing one conveys anger. In nursery school we all learned that what really pissed off Papa Bear wasn't Goldilocks' intrusion into his cozy lair but a more specific affront: She sat in his chair.

In ancient Egyptian art, pharaohs were usually depicted sitting upright, stiffly, in an attempt to convey a perfected geometry, a disciplined posture that might convince the gods to flood the Nile at the right time. It makes intuitive sense: Slouching connotes ease and relaxation, while sitting up suggests aspiration. Stone carvings depict the pharaoh Akhenaton—a controversial, much-despised figure who tried to convert his countrymen to monotheism—slumped in his throne. He's the only pharaoh depicted as a slouch.

Cranz argues that this prejudice against slouching has become a particularly Western and somewhat male phenomenon. In the earliest surviving depiction of the Last Supper, a sixth-century mosaic from Ravenna, Christ and the apostles are shown lying on a U-shaped couch around a low table, propped up on their elbows. In the intervening 14 centuries, artists have revised the image, incorporating upright chairs.

Our current disdain for sitting without a chair explains the debate over whether squat toilets should be called Italian or Turkish, never mind that they are actually better for us than the porcelain throne. Squatting is also easier for women giving birth, but it's uncomfortable for their (mostly male) doctors. And consider this: Reclining office chair prototypes have been built for executives and secretaries, but only executive models are being produced.

Cranz uses such anecdotes to convince readers that the chair is a brilliantly articulated cultural artifact but an irrefutable failure when it comes to sitting. And the problem, as I discovered when I visited her, is bigger than that.

No matter how “ergonomic” the chair, it will always be flawed because there's something intrinsically wrong with sitting. “We weren't born with ankle supports, we weren't born with corsets, and we weren't born with chairs. Holding any position is stressful, and once you try to sedate people by getting them to hold still, you're setting up pain,” Cranz says.

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