The Recent Paterfamilias on: Invisible Chairs

Whoever heard of something so stupid as a “Ghost Chair”? 

This makes the Recent Paterfamilias think of chairs that move across the room on their own.  Or chairs that bleed bright blood at socially embarrassing moments.  Or chairs that speak to you when nobody else is around. 

Well, as it turns out, “Ghost Chairs” are true-to-life actual things, they were even featured on a recent episode of Gossip Girl (please don’t ask me how I know this), and they were exactly what I needed in my spatially-deficient apartment. 

But please, allow me to explain. 

A “Ghost Chair” is a transparent plastic or Plexiglas chair.  Sound modern?  Sure.  Sound tacky?  Well…debatable, until you see one.  The idea behind these so called Ghost Chairs is that, through their transparency, they occupy a sort of zero space, particularly when situated around tables, and more particularly in small apartments, because, being nigh invisible, the eye of the beholder tends to overlook said chairs, thusly making the small space seem larger. 

As the owner of a small space, largeness, or the appearance thereof, is exactly what I needed. 

There is a certain amount of irony not lost on the manufacturers of these so-called Ghost Chairs.  There are Ghost Chairs in the Louis XV style.  There are Ghost Chairs in the Victorian Style.  There are Ghost Chairs in the Eames chair style.  The Ghost Chairs the R.P. and his wife bought (so-called Vapor Chairs from CB2), have served their purpose quite nicely.  They are transparent, they don’t eat up a visual buffet in the apartment, they are shockingly comfortable, and they are decidedly modern in their squarish shape and limited profile. 

The Recent Paterfamilias finds himself forced to admit that his design aesthetic, since the arrival of his Recent Offspring, has become undeniably “modern.”   Which makes the R.P. wonder if certain decorative acquisitions, such as antique duck decoys and Federalist mirrors, seem a trifle out of sorts in his quote unquote Modernist apartment. 

But, naturally, the Recent Paterfamilias exclaims, “Quiet with all that nonsense!”  He likes his collections of old leather-bound books.  He likes his Federalist mirror.  And do they clash, design-wise, with his Ghost Chairs?  Well, probably, but that’s not for the R.P. to say.  (Besides, the Paterfamilias is too busy changing diapers, and teaching his Recent Progeny the alphabet and the U.S. states in alphabetical order to worry about such trivial nonsense.  But…on the sly…the R.P. is forced to wonder…and, thusly, has to ask his loyal readers…do they clash?  This, embarrassingly enough, is a real concern.)