The Most Important Object In My Favorite European Cafés Has Been Under You The Whole Time

Melanie Maerz Fotografie

I have spent the better part of my adult life sitting in European cafés — in Paris and Prague, in Vienna and Lisbon, in Madrid where I now live — nursing a coffee I’ve already finished, watching people walk past, and feeling, in a way I could never entirely explain, that I belonged somewhere. That the world was, briefly, correctly arranged.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to look down.

The chair. The chair was doing something. Not just holding me up — that’s the minimum ask of any chair, a low bar it clears without fanfare — but actively participating in the experience. The slight give of steam-bent beech. The curve of the back that doesn’t so much support your spine as enter into a quiet negotiation with it. The way the whole structure is light enough that you can hook one ankle around a leg and lean slightly forward over y…