Pair of Sunburst Spring-Steel Garden Armchairs in the Manner of François Carré, French Art Deco, c. 1930–1940

The Piece

Two armchairs built entirely out of tension. Flat spring-steel bands radiate from a pierced cast rosette at the center of each seat and each back, fan outward, and rivet to a heavy rolled rim — so the seat has no upholstery, no cushion, and no rigid pan. It flexes under you. Sit down and the whole sunburst gives about an inch and then holds. That's the entire idea, and it's the reason people who own these never get rid of them.

The frames are bent rod: a continuous loop forms each flat strap arm and carries down into splayed legs that finish in small ball feet. The back reads as a full circle, which is what makes them photograph the way they do — from any angle you get two concentric wheels, one horizontal and one vertical, throwing radial shadows across whatever they're standing on.

Both wear an older white paint, worn through in places to the metal beneath, with light surface oxidation at the rim. Structurally they're sound and the springs have kept their tension.

History & Provenance

The sunburst spring chair is a mid-nineteenth-century French invention. Félix Carré was producing them in Paris by the 1850s — by 1865 the design was being written about as a revolution in seating — and he filed a U.S. patent in 1866. After his factory changed hands the form spread across Europe and America, produced by Val d'Osne, by Schlesinger Wiessener & Co. in Vienna and New York, and by other makers into the 1950s.

The version most collectors know, and the one this pair belongs to, is the French interwar iteration sold under the François Carré name: heavier gauge, deco proportions, the full-circle back. Genuine period examples come from France; close contemporaries were also made in Germany, and the two are often indistinguishable once repainted.

These are unmarked, which is ordinary — original stamps and small oval plaques sit on the underside of the seat rim and rarely survive a repaint. They're catalogued here in the manner of Carré rather than attributed outright. From the personal collection of Walter Hinchman, acquired approximately fifteen to twenty years ago and held since.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Most garden furniture is a compromise you accept because the alternative is nothing. These aren't. They're good enough to bring inside, and plenty of people do — flanking a fireplace, at the ends of a dining table where you want something lighter than more upholstery, in an entry, in a sunroom where the light can get through them.

Outdoors they do the thing metal furniture almost never does: they disappear into the planting instead of blocking it. You see through the sunburst to whatever is behind it. Put them on gravel under a tree and by afternoon the shadows are doing more work than the chairs.

They're also comfortable, which surprises people. Spring steel is a suspension system. It's the same reason a well-made metal café chair beats a teak one you have to cushion.

One care note worth passing to the buyer: the junction where the spring bands meet the rim is where these fail, and the fix is simply to keep them dry — under cover in winter rather than out in it.