President Trump's recent interview with Jonathan Swan has a lot of comments asking about the chairs: why are they so short? And I want to know, too. Are these chairs antiques? Was this a style at some time? Why? Why do they use them for these one-on-one interviews, is there some significance to these particular chairs? What's the story behind them?
Thanks in advance, sorry for the barrage of questions.
Well, some things can only be determined with closer inspection, and this is only a partial view and at a distance. They look pretty Sheraton in style, A brief search did not reveal which room was used for the interview. That would be useful, as the White House Museum has a lot of photos and documentation on every room. It does not seem to be the Brady Briefing Room, which has almost all the space filled with theater seats. The East Room is the right color, and there's a note on the WHM site that a local Georgetown cabinet maker, William King, made 24 chairs for it in 1818.....but it does not say any of them are still there. However, these two interview chairs look a little like the chairs from the State Dining room, instead, and interestingly those are described as :
Mahogany side chairs and arm chairs, custom-made in North Carolina, replace a set that was upholstered in a golden yellow fabric.
The new chairs are done in a brown, grid-patterned "horsehair" fabric and trimmed with brass nail heads. They were modeled after arm chairs that President James Monroe acquired for the East Room in 1818 from a cabinetmaker in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, according to White House curator William Allman.
It seems at least possible that someone went out and got two from the old yellow set, now siting in a closet.
EDIT A full set of dining room chairs will, with the heavy use expected under the weight of heavy personages, become a partial set of dining room chairs and a few broken and battered ones. If this happened here, there would be a need to replace the whole set and also there would be several of the old yellow chairs still in good shape that could be used for mere journalists. This is a a question for the curator of the WHM , of course, but if so, another would be whether the first set had casters, and if they broke, and were then removed. Because if they broke ( not unusual) and were simply removed, those particular chairs would then be about 1 1/2 inches lower. This is only speculation, but at least plausible.