(Sorry for the delay – I’ve been learning the WordPress editor that was introduced during my hiatus)
I bet you thought my first post after a four-year absence would be a blockbuster. Did I discover Pepin’s personal diary while rummaging through a ruined church in Budapest? Found an early Roland manuscript that explains what “AOI” is all about? Oh no, my friends, something much better:
A chair! Well, actually, a stool.
Earthenware and glass can survive for millennia, but wood, fabric, and most of the rest of daily life degrades quickly when not maintained. Water is bad for everything. Insects eat anything. Metals, except for gold, tarnish and rust away. The archaeological record of “material culture” is sparse, and any discoveries are noteworthy. This is even more true in Europe, which has a lot of rain and heavy soil (as opposed to sand) which tends to lay waste to anything organic.
Let us ponder… the chair. What did people, commoners and kings, sit on?
Kings and other worthies, naturally, sat on thrones. Consider the Throne of Maximian, carved by Byzantine craftsmen for the archbishop of Ravenna in the 6th century. Armrests, a backrest, and hopefully cushioned with a suitable pillow.
Ivory panels carved with biblical scenes decorate all areas of the throne. This chair probably sat on a stepped platform of some sort, so that supplicants need look ever higher to catch the great man’s gaze. Very impressive, but not common.
Our visual evidence is limited to the few illustrated manuscripts that have survived. Some of the illustrations are what we might call meta, in that they show the reader a manuscript illustrator toiling away.
In a scene from the Lindisfarne Gospels we observe the humble prophet Ezra, pen in hand, clad in the garb of an early eighth-century illustrator at work in the Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey. He sits upon a four-legged bench with a green cushion that nicely complements his purple robes. His sandaled feet are at repose upon a sloped footrest. Illustrations that show benches as seats are fairly common in the manuscripts. I found at least a dozen in the few books on the topic in my little library.
The Throne of Dagobert is a remarkably preserved early seventh-century folding stool. It is in the form known as the curule seat, which has been in use for a very long time.
Obviously the fabric seat is missing, but this is roughly the same kind of chair you might take camping, one that unfolds so that you might settle your backside on a stretched canvas seat.
In the ninth century (we are told by those who tell us about these things) the arm rests and the back piece were added. The increase in comfort came at the loss of utility, for the stool can no longer fold. It is made of bronze, and clearly fit for a king or some other elite individual.
Take a look at the figure perusing a scroll in the center of this third-century Italian sarcophagus. He rests on what is clearly a curule seat.
And with that brief survey, let us examine the recent discovery in Germany:
OK, maybe it’s not the most impressive archeological relic ever unearthed, but let’s take a look at the particulars:
First, it comes from 7th century Bavarian woman’s grave, so it is much closer in time and space to the focus of this blog. Second, it is one of those rare pieces of material culture that enables us to see what daily life was like. The fact that this is a piece of furniture makes it all the more exciting. There are less than thirty medieval folding chairs in all of Europe. Third, this piece is made of iron, a material which so impressed the citizens of Pavia in 773 as Charles’ army approached that they cried, “Oh! The iron! Alas for the iron!” (Notker the Stammerer, p. 164 – still working on the footnote functionality…) While wood was the obvious material for furniture, just like today, if something was made of metal it was usually bronze.
A careful examination of the in situ photo allows a few initial conclusions: the legs are straight, not the curvy elegance of Dagobert’s throne or the seat of the gent so engrossed in his scroll. It is sturdy and unadorned, yet obviously a prized possession of a higher-status individual.
There’s a lot of work to be done on the Bavarian chair. It doesn’t look like any organic material (like a chair seat) survived, but you never know what might they might find in the laboratory.
Now for the mysterious part: these folding stools are usually found in women’s graves! Hence the blog title, in a sorry attempt at clickbait… Such an odd detail. Women are sometimes seen in manuscripts, but I’ve never seen a woman sitting on a folding stool. Why were women buried with folding stools, but not men? That question is one to which I would dearly love to know the answer, but never will.
Here are a couple of other links of interest:
The ever-dependable History Blog, where I first saw the story.
A deeper look at Anglo-Saxon chairs (because you can’t get enough, admit it).