When is a Chair Not a Chair?

This month's House Beautiful Magazine was a wonderful little indulgence for me.  I get excited seeing page after page of things that are "the same but different".  In this case, it was the color green, and there was so much eye candy in this issue.  I was immediately drawn in by the chair on the front cover:

Which is this chair from this company:

Artistic Frame Co.

This type of chair has been wildly popular lately, and when I first saw a pair of these in one of Kelly Weartsler's interiors, I loved them for their quirky beauty.  The look of them totally transports me to another era--kind of Sherlock Holmes-y.
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Then they started cropping up in mainstream retail home furnishing stores:

 Restoration Hardware

And appearing in modified form as interpretations of the original:

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I'm sure like me, many people are curious about what it would be like to have one of these chairs in your home.  That's why I had to laugh when a couple of months ago, one of my favorite (hilarious) evening sitcoms, Rules of Engagement, dedicated an entire episode to making fun of these chairs.....and they raised an interesting point.

The whole episode is an arguement between Jeff and Audrey when Audrey orders "the chair", actually hates it  but pretends to like it to avoid an "I told you so" from Jeff.  They engage in a hilarious battle of wills, and end up with two of these beauties--watch a clip from the episode here.

The point they were trying to make was that this chair didn't really function as a great chair should, and wasn't a good marriage of style and comfort.  So when is a chair not a chair?  When it looks like a time machine and functions like a phone booth (Audrey had to call Jeff from her cel phone even though they were sitting right next to each other :))


Nevertheless, I still love the look of these beasts, and am more curious than ever to sit in one and see how it feels.  A quick trip to Restoration Hardware might be in order--I'm sure they have several!