At the Brooklyn Museum's recent Converging Cultures exhibit I saw a massive Peruvian eighteenth-century ecclesiastical armchair with spooky toe joints. And the jargon of furniture continues the metaphor. Chairs have knuckles. They have knees. They have elbows.
Chairs have seats and backs, often reverse contours of our own.
They have arms, often the size of ours. The protruding corners of Chippendale chairs are called ears. Chairs even have a social life. Many seem to travel in herds, like the curious little gilt ones that are toted from one society event to another, or they exist in stacks, like communally nesting swallows or purple martins. In the Fogg Museum exhibit for the Day Without Art, commemorating AIDS victims, chairs represent solidarity and individuality, and promise continuity.