Chair, stool

A chair, also called a zydel [folk stool], is a piece of furniture characterised by a trapezoidal seat, often with bevelled corners and a symmetrically and richly profiled backrest recessed into the seat board. A hole, serving as a handle, usually heart-shaped, is cut out in the central part of the backrest. Such chairs were popular in West Pomerania, including the Pyrzyce region in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, but in the 20th century, most of them were unpainted. Nineteenth-century furniture in the Pyrzyce region, including zydels, was decorated with paint. The presented chair has colours typical for this region. The patterns are applied in warm colours on a 'cold' background, in this case, dark blue. Floral motifs in red, green and yellow cover the backrest and the seat. Flowers with flat heads are connected by a swirling red sigmoid line, especially on the backrest. This painting maintains the symmetry of the entire backrest, whose axis is marked by cut-outs in the shape of a stylised flower on its upper edge and a heart below. The fine profiling of the backrest makes it visually 'light' in relation to the larger, massive seat with chamfered corners and supported by four widely-spaced legs, round in cross-section. The legs are recessed into two spiracles mounted underneath the seat.

Iwona Karwowska