Wright Chair For Sale. Or is That the Wrong Chair?

When we got up this morning, the last thing we expected to be doing was chasing down the origin of a chair.

We’re not gonna go all eBay-crazy here, but here’s yet another item of very local interest worth bidding on: an original Frank Lloyd Wright-designed theater chair from Kalita Humphreys Theater, which dates back to its December 27, 1959, opening. At least, the owner of the chair says it’s an original chair; back to that pertinent question in a moment.

Anyway, the seller says he (or she) snagged it from the theater “a number of years ago when the theater was refurbished”; the best I can tell, that would have been in 1983, when Adrian Hall changed the seating to give “the audience a better sightline to the stage,” says the Dallas Theater Center’s Web site. At the time, additional seats were added to the theater itself.

But don’t place that bid just yet.

It appears there’s a catch. Eva Chien, the DTC’s public relations director, says she’s not sure the seat’s from the original theater. Initially, she was very sure it wasn’t: “There’s no way this chair is from the original theater, because Frank Lloyd Wright designed all the seats to be beige to correspond with his organic theory of architecture,” Chien said this morning. But she has since received conflicting information from theater and Wright historians concerning the piece of furniture.

Chien says it’s possible the chair might have come from elsewhere in the theater — like, say, the lobby or even from an extended last row by the wall of the theater. “That’s a possibility,” she says. “But I need to check with the selller.”

Indeed, at this very moment Chien’s sending the seller an e-mail with questions about the chair’s origins; expect an update shortly. At the moment, there have been nine bids placed on the chair; the amount’s up to $127.50, with under a day left for bidding. –Robert Wilonsky