This article was first featured on MIT Press.
This article was originally published by Omar W. Nasim.The Astronomer’s Chair: A Visual and Cultural History”.
When you close your eyes and think about a chair, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s your dad’s favorite easy chair, the one you sunk into to watch TV that still has the strong smell of pipe tobacco. . The sofa I was sitting on when I first beat Mario Bros. Or a special sofa, always covered with a sheet or plastic cover until the arrival of guests.
Additionally, some people may even see designer chairs like Le Corbusier’s in their mind’s eye. chaise lounge, Charles and Ray Eames armchair and side chairor The ubiquitous plastic monoblock chair The chair, banned by the city of Basel in 2008, embodies an iconic design of the 20th centuryth Not to mention fetish commercial objects that continue to inspire and repel throughout the centuries. Additionally, some may imagine Van Gogh’s familiarity. rustic wooden chair Or the Iron Throne, the centerpiece of the hit series Game of Thrones. In any case, it is clear that the chair encases more than just inert furniture.
After all, a chair, like the floor beneath your feet and the walls around you, is one of those inconspicuous supports that tends to fade into the background in favor of other tasks like reading. But if we look at the chair systematically and take it seriously as an object of historical study, it opens up a whole world of significance.
As an indicator of height there is a symbolic chair in the history of science. These range from Voltaire’s reading chair, complete with candelabra and bookstand, to Benjamin’s Franklin’s library chair, which had a built-in staircase, to Charles’ Darwin’s, which is still on display in his home office in Down House, Kent. They range from armchairs with wheels. These artifacts are housed in museums and are visited by thousands of people every year. These relics shine with a historical and cultural aura associated with the place of science in modern society. Consider also Stephen Hawking’s wheelchair. After this famous astrophysicist passed away in 2018, it was initially thought that he would be sent to the Science Museum in London, but in the end Purchased at Christie’s auction house It was sold for $390,000 in London, and ended up in private hands.Or a corner chair made from the wood of the legendary apple tree on his manor Woolsthorpe in the early 19th century It is said that Newton was sitting under it..
On all these levels, from the everyday to the symbolic, from the physical to the symbolic, from the real to the mythical, the chair’s prominent presence in the history of science is recognized. There is a need to be understood. As a historian of science motivated by the work of cultural historians of design and furniture, I wroteastronomer’s chair” Why an astronomer? This book was born out of an interesting observation. In researching the role of drawings and photography in astronomy, I noticed a recurring but previously unrecognized motif. It is a representation of an observation chair specifically designed for use by astronomers with telescopes. Once I started noticing them, I started seeing them everywhere. Photos sometimes showed the astronomer sitting in a custom-made chair. Also, the special chair, although empty, was sometimes installed alongside the observatory’s other state-of-the-art equipment.
It turns out that the astronomer’s chair also has a long history.
At least as early as the mid-14th century, we find hexagonal panel reliefs produced in the workshop of Andrea Pisano for Giotto’s bell tower in Florence. The panel, now in the Duomo Opera Museum, depicts Gionitus, the mythical founder of astronomy, sitting at a desk, manipulating a quadrant and taking notes. There is also. Portrait of the 9th century Baghdad astronomer al-Farghani, carved in 1493 (A.D. 800/805-870), in the Latin translation of his important works, seated on a bench next to a small statue of a hermit. The frontispiece of Albrecht Dürer’s De scientia motus orbis (1504) is a reference to an 8th century Arabic astronomical text by the Persian-Jewish astronomer MashaAllah ibn Atari (740-815 CE). A special chair probably holding a globe and compass, although the Latin translation shows the latter in a strange way.
Illuminated manuscripts depicting the seated astronomer are often found, such as the portrait of Ptolemy that graces the title page of “Ptolemaeus: Magna Compositio, Zierrahmen mit Tugenden und dem Wappen” (1465). Ptolemy is depicted sitting like a king on a throne, wearing a crown and holding a compass. However, among the most famous depictions is his 1598 Tycho Brahe engraving depicting the famous astronomer, set in the middle of the famous astronomical observatory on Haven Island.
Besides Johannes Vermeer Oil painting on canvas 1668 “The Astronomer” or intricate carvings According to the German Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius, written by E. de Bourronois, in the 17th century there were many sightings of astronomers holding telescopes and possibly doing their work. That may also be considered. Famous prints from the Octagonal Room at Royal Observatory Greenwich From 1676.
In the 18th century, such images increased. Among the well-known ones are A 1735 depiction of Danish astronomer Ole Römer sitting on a low-cushioned chair. studied using his innovative meridian telescope.There are nice and green places Mezzotint of Austrian astronomer Maximilian Hell Seated next to the instrument, dressed in the warmest Lapland winter attire (1771).of Mezzotint by Thomas Phelps and John Bartlett This work depicts two people working together. One person is looking through a telescope while the other is sitting in an observation chair taking notes (1778). and a portrait oil on canvas by the artist Charles W. Peale (1796). American astronomer David Rittenhouse sits next to a telescope on a table.
As we approached the 19th century, the amount and presence of expression began to increase significantly, so the examples could be multiplied infinitely, but so too did the number of physical chairs designed for astronomical purposes. Masu. In researching this book, I found hundreds of these images from that century and the next, and the proliferation of depictions coincided with a growing interest in the use, design, and construction of such chairs by astronomers themselves. I realized that it is compatible.
With such an expanded visual timeline, multiple representations and sensitivity to its different sociocultural contexts are used to capture the image of science, the nature of its research, and the persona of astronomers in a particular period. It can reveal the history of the iconography that alludes to the statue. But instead of presenting and examining the entire history of these images—an ambitious iconographic project for a broader and more definitive study—I present in The Astronomer’s Chair a snapshot of this history. We aim to provide the first intensive information, limited to shots only. Consider how you can illuminate the cultural significance of the chair and its representation in 19th century astronomy and design.
According to Asa Briggs, the preeminent historian of all things Victorian, objects like chairs are a sign of meaning that allows us to reconstruct past eras, indeed other “intelligible universes.” It’s a “messenger.” Given how eagerly astronomers were staging observation chairs and posing in them during this period, I was curious to know what message they were trying to send to their audiences. . How were these performances read by 19th century audiences? What impact did it have on function and design? And what they said about astronomy in particular, and the cultural place of science more generally. What I discovered was both surprising and thought-provoking. By observing the chair, Topoi Using far more indicators than meets the eye, we explore a variety of previously well-studied themes related to the long 19th century cultural history, including gender, historicism, labor, and race. Gain interdisciplinary insights into and turn them into rich themes. Resources about the science and history of furniture.
Omar W. Nasim Professor of the History of Science at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He is the author of “.Observing with your hands: sketching 19th century nebulae” (University of Chicago Press), “astronomer’s chairThis article has been edited based on that.
