Saridis of Athens — a concept by Alan Yang

A pair of Klismos chairs in walnut and woven leather, Saridis of Athens, 1961

A woman with a lyre seated on a klismos, painted on an Attic oil flask, about 465 BC

Nº 3
Klismos

Walnut, woven leather. The chair painted on Athenian vases of the fifth century BC, as T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings redrew it for Saridis in 1961.

90 × 53 × 74 cmNº 3 →

I
The klismos

A chair with a curved back and four curved legs. Athenians painted it on their pottery and carved it on their graves for more than a century.

Ten of them, in date order, from the Metropolitan Museum and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The eleventh is the one Saridis made in 1961.

Klismos painted inside a drinking cup by Douris — **c. 475 BC**Drinking cup, Douris. Met 52.11.4

Klismos on an oil flask, woman with a lyre — **c. 465 BC**Oil flask, Painter of Oxford 1920. Met 06.1129

Klismos on a lidded box — **c. 460 BC**Lidded box. Met 06.1117

Klismos on an oil flask by the Carlsruhe Painter — **475–450 BC**Oil flask, Carlsruhe Painter. Met 41.162.145

Klismos on a water jar by the Shuvalov Painter — **c. 430 BC**Water jar, Shuvalov Painter. Met 1984.11.1

Klismos carved on the grave stele of Hegeso — **410–400 BC**Grave stele of Hegeso. National Archaeological Museum, Athens, 3624

Klismos carved almost in the round on a stele fragment — **400–375 BC**Grave stele of a woman, fragments. Met 52.11.3

Klismos on a grave stele of a woman — **375–350 BC**Grave stele of a woman. Met 65.11.11

Klismos on a family grave stele — **375–350 BC**Grave stele of a man. Met 59.11.27

The Hegeso stele photographed in the Kerameikos in the 1880s — **1880s**Hegeso, photographed where it was found. W.J. Stillman. Met 2005.100.1313

Klismos chair in olive wood, Saridis of Athens — **1961**Klismos Nº 3, olive wood. Saridis of Athens

II Nº 3Klismos chair

The side chair of the 1961 collection. A concave back rail on two curved stiles, four sabre legs, a seat of woven leather thongs wrapped round the rails.

Side and front, traced from the chaircm

Height: 90 cm · 35¼ in
Width: 53 cm · 21 in
Depth: 74 cm · 29¼ in
Wood: Walnut
Seat: Woven leather thongs
Designer: T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, 1961
Maker: Saridis, Athens

Under the seat, the maker's iron. Add up to seven letters of your own above it.

Walnut, underside of a Saridis table. The mark below is the maker's own, burnt in Athens in the late 1960s.

Price on requestOrder from Saridis ↗

Klismos chair in walnut, 1961 — Walnut · 1961

Klismos chair in olive wood, 1961 — Olive wood · 1961

Klismos chair in black, made by Saridis today — Black · made today

III
By hand

Ten details from pieces Saridis made in Athens between 1961 and the 1970s.

Woven leather seat — 2Leather thongs over the seat rail

Bronze animal-paw foot — 3Cast bronze foot, Trapeza table

Seat rail meeting the leg — 5Rail into leg

Fluted pedestal base — 6Fluted base, table Nº 110

Back and leg of the Klini chaise — 7Klini Nº 11, back and leg

Red leather top of a card table — 8Leather top, card table

The brass plate seen through the woven seat — 9The plate, through the seat

IVMaterials, cut from photographs of the pieces

Leather thongs — **Leather**Woven seats and backs

V
The collection

Twelve pieces, each with its model number. Sizes are those of pieces made by Saridis and sold at auction.

NºNameTypeH × W × D cm

Nº 3 Klismos, 1961

VI
1961

In May 1961 Eleftherios Saridis opened his factory in central Athens to show twenty-six pieces by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings. The King and Queen of Greece came to the opening.

Each piece stood beside a photograph of the ancient furniture it was drawn from.

In 1963 Robsjohn-Gibbings and Carlton W. Pullin published the same pairing as a book, Furniture of Classical Greece (Knopf): a chair on one page, the vase or relief it came from on the other.

Furniture of Classical Greece, 1963: a modern klismos facing an ancient one — Furniture of Classical Greece, 1963. Chair and source on facing pages.

The 1963 book jacket and a Saridis catalogue — The 1963 jacket, and a Saridis catalogue with the Greek wordmark.

The underside of a Saridis table: a burnt Greek mark, a paper workshop label and a brass plate

Three marks under one table.VII Underside of a table made by Saridis in the late 1960s.

ΣΑΡΙΔΗΣBurnt into the wood with an iron. The letters of this site are drawn from it.

Workshop labelΣΑΡΙΔΗΣ Α.Ε., Syngrou Avenue, Athens.

Brass plateDesigned by T.H. Robsjohn Gibbings. Manufactured by Saridis of Athens.

Saridis of AthensSince 1961

A concept by Alan YangIdentity, website and shop. Unsolicited; not affiliated with or commissioned by Saridis. Ancient works: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access; Hegeso stele photograph by George E. Koronaios, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pieces, details and archive: Wright, Sotheby's, Bonhams. Dimensions from Wright catalogues.

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