The adventures of a little red chair

| 30 Aug 2013 | 12:20

    A famous chair recently stayed at The Wooden Duck Bed and Breakfast in Andover.

    Yes, a chair, and not just any chair. This humble desk accouterment with peeling crimson paint and wobbly wooden legs has become a symbol of fun and travel.

    It all started in Woods Hole, MA with a woman named Beth Colt has owned The Woods Hole Inn since 2008. A few years ago, her life took a serendipitous turn when she found, of all things, a red chair at a local dump.

    Something prompted her to take a photo of the chair perched on the ice bond behind her house. She posted it on Facebook, and that’s when the fun, and a fabulous journey for a once-discarded chair began.

    Thanks to cyberspace travel, that photo found its way to the inbox of a Santa Barbara photographer named Julie Ann Cromer. It inspired her to travel to Woods Hole and asked to borrow the chair. “She proceed to take an incredible photo of it on Nobska Beach here in town,” Colt said.

    This inspired Colt to keep on sharing the chair with other inns and bed and breakfasts — first on Cape Cod, later all over New England and now across America.

    “There are lots of funny reactions from innkeepers, maybe the best are from those who don’t get it,” she said. “Imagine you have to call 150 inns and tell them a story about a red chair. Yes, people hang up on you, but the braver and more intrepid types listen to the end, and those inns have become our partners in this traveling journey.”

    Locally, Beth and Karl Krummel own The Wooden Duck and received an e-mail from the Professional Innkeepers Association about the Red Chair and its journey.

    “The e-mail was asking for inns to host the Red Chair,” said Beth Krummel. They volunteered and were chosen, so several weeks ago, their guest arrived on a Sunday and was with them until Thursday when they had to deliver it to its next destination. “You are to treat the Red Chair as a guest, so you take it places you think guests might enjoy and photograph it,” said Krummel. This included making a stop for a photograph of the Red Chair in Weehawkin with the New York City skyline behind it en route to delivering it to The Ivy Terrace in Manhattan.

    “It was a lot of fun...it was sad to see it go,” she said. “It took on a real personality.”

    Innkeepers report that they appreciate the chance to get out of their everyday routines and visit the many beautiful spots that they concierge about all day. “They love walking down the street with a red chair and having people stop in their tracks,” Colt said. It’s hard to wander around taking pictures of a chair without eliciting some questions, so the red chair facilitates meeting and sharing.

    “The Red Chair travels like Blanche duBois relying on the kindness of strangers...and the project is really a barn-raising where innkeepers from all over the country have pitched in to make the trip happen,” she said.

    Though Colt said there are no formal economic elements to the red chair’s journey, she does envision a book one day.

    For now, the red chair remains a perfect metaphor for getting outside of the everyday when you travel. It’s journey is takes a cultivated object as simple as a chair into a series of unexpected locations and landscapes.

    “It’s a great way to visually get people to think about where they might want to go next. The juxtaposition in the exterior world is jarring, fascinating, memorable, and funny. I do hope the Red Chair makes people laugh, as it makes me chuckle every time I look at it.”

    For more photos of The Red Chair visit www.woodenduckinn.com and click on the What’s New button to the upper right or visit www.redchairtravels.com.