Once at the centre of merry-making and philosophical debate, the chaise longue has taken a back seat in recent decades. James Thellusson looks back at a fallen furniture idol

“On the chaise longue
All day long”
“Chaise Longue” by Wet Leg (Domino Recording Co, 2021)

Wet Leg, a pop band from the Isle of Wight, released their debut single “Chaise Longue” in 2021. The song went viral and confirmed that when it comes to idling there’s no item of furniture as iconic as the chaise lounge. How has this piece become a global symbol of indolence?

We could blame the French. After all, the phrase chaise longue is French, literally meaning “long chair”. It was the French aristocracy who went mad for these chairs in the 18th century and drove demand for them throughout Europe. Also John Gloag’s highly respected Dictionary of Furniture defines a chaise longue as “French” and having a “long seat with an inclined upholstered back and arms”. However Max Donnelly, curator of furniture at the Victoria & Albert Museum, thinks definitions should also consider “Form and function, design and use. It’s also about how people use it in different eras.”

People have always loved lolling on furniture, and the chaise (or something like it) has been the lumbar-support of choice for loafers since ancient China, when they used a long, lightweight bamboo bench tied together and piled with cushions and rugs. They slept on them, socialised on them and conducted business on them, blurring the boundary between night-time and daytime furniture.

A similar chair-cum-daybed was common in ancient Egypt. By 1500 BCE, what had been a functional lounger built from reeds had evolved into an elegant wooden objet d’art. Built with mortise-and-tenon joints, the ancient craftsmen gave these embryonic chaises legs like snakes and lions and veneered them with ebony, gold-leaf and ivory. These were festooned with images of the Egyptian gods and were used in private and public settings including bedrooms and banquet halls. The craftsmanship of these items is breath-taking and examples of them can be found at museums like the V&A.

By the time of the ancient Greeks, this piece of furniture was commonplace across the Mediterranean and Middle East and among different communities. It was becoming symbolically associated with conviviality and social functions, in particular those which involved eating and drinking. The Age of Recline to Dine had begun.

By the 7th century BC wealthy Greeks had a special couch for relaxed dining called a kline. This was a chaise-like day bed. The ancient kline didn’t have the elegant padding of the later Rococo French chaise longue but, draped with fabric and cushions, it was comfortable enough for the Greeks and also their gods, who are pictured lounging about on this type of chair in the art and crafts of the time. The chaise had made it to Heaven.

The kline was also an essential item at a symposium, a post-banquet drinking party derived from the ancient Greek word sympinein, meaning “to drink together”. Male diners at a symposium would lie on their sides on klinai arranged against the walls of the dining room and discuss politics, poetry and philosophy into the night. Plato’s dialogue Symposium is famously set in one of these high-society post-dinner party debates.

From the Greek era, the chaise becomes associated with communal conviviality and thoughtfulness, an association which continues into the French salon of the 19th century. Is there something magical about the angle of the chaise, which unlocks good conversation?

The Greek kline morphed into the Roman lectus (Latin for a bed or couch). Dining rooms were called triclinium and the lectus triclinaris, a three-sided couch, allowed rich Romans to eat, drink and debate in comfort. Sometimes up to three people lounged on each lectus and an etiquette developed on how each person arrayed themselves on it.

After Rome, the chaise disappears from Western fashion until 17th century France, where it is born again in its modern plumper form. Improvements in upholstery and other techniques allowed craftsmen to produce more elegant forms, intricate detailing and fancy padding. By the end of the 18th century, the chaise longue is the must-have of the French court.

In 1800, Jacques-Louis David paints Madame Recamier, a salon hostess, on a chaise longue. This type of chaise becomes known as a Recamier and the image becomes famous and establishes the chaise as a plinth for the female form and a view of femininity. Pictures of reclining women or nudes are not new, but the link between the chaise and women is so strong that the number of men recorded on a chaise is limited. A photograph of a grumpy looking Gérard Depardieu in silk trousers sitting uncomfortably on a chaise is an exception to the rule.

Inspired by the French, well-to-do Britons of the Industrial Revolution lusted after the cachet that chaises offered. Donnelly says, “these groups spent inordinate amounts of money on furnishing their homes. This was the heyday of upholstered furniture. Possession communicates you had the time to relax and indulge in a piece of furniture like this.”

It’s popularly believed that the Victorians had other uses for the chaise. Fainting couches – chaises longue in all but name – are said to have been sold on the premise that they would allow women to pass out elegantly and safely when their ludicrously tight corsets stopped the flow of blood to their brains. Meanwhile, according to Julia Lovell, lecturer in Chinese History & Literature, in Victorian opium dens, “to be a truly discerning smoker, you needed the long, beautifully carved, dark wood chaise longue to recline on”.

In the late 19th century, psychoanalysts rejected the sterile medical bed and adopted the chaise to encourage their patients to unburden themselves. The chaise had morphed again into a horizontal confession box and to this day it’s one of the most popular mises en scène for cartoonists. (Freud’s couch, by the way, can be seen at the Freud Museum in north London).

With the 20th century, new chaise variants arrived. No longer flat-bottomed benches, the Modernist chaise curved up and down to accentuate the body’s curves. Movement is introduced. Le Corbusier creates a sleek, metal-framed chaise that could tilt to raise the head or lower the feet. The Brazilian designer Joaquim Tenreiro creates a rocking chaise longue, which Donnelly describes as “a stylish take on this traditional and normally static furniture type”.

The world of film adopts the chaise. Like all props, the chaise has a symbolic as well as practical use. Paula Benson, editor and founder of online resource Film & Furniture, says, “The chaise is used to signify a character is rich or decadent. Or as a status symbol. If you can afford a chaise longue, then you need a large house or a country estate.” She cites Bruce Wayne’s Mies van der Rohe chaise in Batman versus Superman.

The chaise appears in most genres – drama, science fiction (remember the furniture in the space hotel in 2001: A Space Odyssey) and comedy (think Up Pompeii). It also features in a host of movies depicting ancient Rome and Egypt. The weirdest chaise on film is Holly Golightly’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Her chaise is a three-sided, iron bathtub with taps intact and a bottom lined with cushions which probably wouldn’t pass the Gloag test. Behind the camera, ageing director Billy Wilder liked to nap on a chaise designed for him by Charles and Ray Eames, so that he didn’t have to leave the set while filming.

Upon getting married, the English actress Mrs Patrick Campbell (1865-1940) allegedly said she welcomed “the deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly burly of the chaise longue”. Sadly, her comment unveils the unpleasant use of the chaise longue as a casting couch and, according to Benson, its frequent use in porn movies.

The chaise has developed deep roots into our culture. But is it still popular? The Chaise Longue Company sell bespoke chaises longues. Beyoncé used one of theirs on a recent tour of the UK. Jo Peacock, their CEO, thinks, “There’s been a Downton Abbey effect creating more interest in period furniture. Customers are looking for individualistic pieces, an item which makes a statement. They’re not after a bog-standard sofa and the range of fabrics and designs available now is phenomenal so you can do something really special.”

You can certainly spend a lot of money on a chaise (the world’s most expensive – the aluminium Lockheed Lounge – sold at auction for $3.7m as recently as 2015 thanks to Madonna using it in a pop video). But do people still congregate on chaises in boudoirs for banter? Do people still recline and dine? An interior designer friend told me that when she sees chaises longue in her wealthy clients’ homes, they’re usually parked at the foot of beds under a pile of dirty laundry and an expensive hypoallergenic cat.

The sofa has taken over the social role of the chaise, cheekily extending its share of the market for lounging by adding seats and corners to its design. Dinner party debates are now done upright and uptight in chairs. The chaise has lost its original communal and conversational function and has retired to the library or the landing. Will we ever again learn to lounge like Egyptians?

This article is from Idler #94.

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