MacLaren Bar and Counter Chair
The MacLaren Bar Chair was the first of the line—and was, from the beginning, a chair rather than a stool. The distinction matters. A stool tucks under a counter and disappears; a chair occupies the kitchen as furniture, with a back to lean against and arms to settle into. The brief, when it came, was admirably plain: a chair generous enough for pot-bellied men. Richard drew it accordingly—wide of seat, generous of arm, with the strapping placed where the elbow expected to find it.
The form one sees on first glance reads as a folding chair, and one would be forgiven the assumption: the long crossing legs, the strapping at seat and arm, the campaign vocabulary. But the MacLaren does not fold, and was never meant to. The legs are joined permanently and braced for the long life of a chair that lives in a kitchen and is sat in every day. What the design borrows from the folding chair is its visual economy—the X of the leg, the leather where wood would otherwise be—and the suggestion of a piece that could, in some other life, be packed away. It simply elects not to.
The arm straps are English bridle leather rather than wood, and certain to deepen with use the way a good belt or a saddle does. The cushion sits upon a sling of fabric or leather tightened with leather belts—the construction that gives the chair its particular ease, the seat yielding under the sitter the way a well-made saddle does. Offered in narrow or wide, in counter or bar height, with all heights adjustable to non-standard dimensions when the kitchen calls for it. At bar height, the chair makes itself usefully at home in rooms with a pool table, where it is rather more dignifiedly called a spectator chair.
Materials
Wood: 26 woods from light to dark and several specialty finishes
Fabric:Canvas, Hemp Canvas and Perennials;
19 indoor fabrics and 63 indoor/outdoor fabrics.
COM - 4 yards – 50” goods subject to approval
Upholstery Leather: 200 + leathers from Garrett Leather and Moore & Giles
English bridle leather strapping colors:
black, dark chocolate, Havana, saddle, cognac and coach
Options:
Share:
Dimensions
Bar chair - wide
chair: 23.5” W x 22” D
cushion: 20” w x 20 D
overall height: 46.5”
seat height: 30”
seat width and depth: 20” W x 20” D
arm strap and leg height: 37 1/4”
Bar chair – narrow
chair: 22” W x 21” D
cushion: 18” W x 19” D
overall height: 46.5”
seat height: 30”
arm strap and leg height: 37 1/4”
Counter chair - wide
chair: 23.5” W x 22” D
cushion: 20” W x 20” D
overall height: 41.5”
seat height: 25”
seat width and depth: 20” W x 20” D
arm strap and leg height: 32 1/4”
Counter chair - narrow
chair: 21.5” W x 21” D
cushion: 18” W x 19” D
overall height: 41.5”
seat height: 25”
arm strap and leg height: 32 1/4”
Counter and Bar Chairs can be made to non-standard counter height dimensions