Painted Provençal Ladderback Armchair With Rush Seat and Floral Cushion

This painted ladderback armchair spent its working life in Patricia's upstairs office at Chanteduc, the farmhouse and cooking school she and Walter have kept for decades near Vaison-la-Romaine — positioned, as Patricia would have it, to face out over the flower-filled garden and the forested rolling hills beyond. A modern piece made in the spirit of the traditional Provençal ladderback chairs that have furnished southern French homes since the eighteenth century, it wears its influences lightly. The frame is painted in a soft, chalky cream; three gently scalloped horizontal rails climb the back, a carved apron sits below the seat, and cabriole legs end in modest scroll feet tied together by a turned stretcher. The rush seat — woven in the traditional manner — is topped with a generously padded cushion that Patricia had made from a pretty floral fabric: a warm ground scattered with full-blown roses and botanical sprigs in dusty pink, sage and gold. The pairing of pale painted wood and faded floral is entirely characteristic of Provençal domestic life at its most considered. A chair like this earns its place in almost any room — at a writing desk, beside a bedroom window, or drawn up to a kitchen table. In a contemporary interior, it brings exactly the kind of relaxed, sun-warmed character that no amount of new furniture can replicate: the sense that someone has been sitting here, contentedly, for a very long time.