Design moment: The Adirondack chair c.1905

For a homemade design created more than 100 years ago, the Adirondack chair has stood the test of time and become immediately identifiable as a quintessentially American piece of furniture. There can’t be many movies set in summer houses on the east coast of the US that don’t have at least one on the lawn.

It was a needs-must design by Thomas Lee while he and his family – all 22 members of them – were holidaying in their summerhouse in 1903 in Westport in upstate New York. His family were his product testers – advising him on the slant of the back, the width of the armrests (perfect for resting a drink and a book) and its height – it is famously squat. He called it a Westport plank chair for very obvious reasons when you look at it. The lake-side Westport – with the Adirondack mountains in the distance – was a favourite destination for tuberculosis sufferers coming up from the city for its clean mountain air.

Lee didn’t patent the chair – that fell to his friend Harry Bunnell, a carpenter and year-round Westport resident who immediately saw the chair’s commercial potential. His patent, filed in 1905, referred to “his” invention of a “new and useful improvement in chairs” and he made them throughout the quiet winter months and sold them in his shop during the busy summer ones. It is not clear if Lee gave him permission but both men continued for the following two decades to produce the reclining chair with Lee continuing to call his chairs Westport chairs.

The original chairs were made of pine and painted dark brown or green. Maybe it is its simplicity of construction – kit forms became available in the 1940s – but it was soon copied north of the border in Canada where the same design has long been known as the Muskoka chair.