I feel the most pressing question here is: what caused those brown stains? It could be just dye from a cushion but it’s also suggestive of a body that has spent too long in the chair, which fits with my hypothesis outline elsewhere that people will typically love a favourite armchair to death. Until death.
But this is also why dead things can be so compelling (no, really). Not just the form, colour and context of the object itself but also the traces they carry of a lived experience, the smears and tears, creases and folds that speak of a body constantly in motion, rubbing and shifting. It’s the wear and tear of daily existence made visible.
This is life; a slow abrasion and seepage into the objects around us until, even when we are no longer there, the objects themselves speak of our presence, testify to fact that we once were there.
For more dead armchairs, look here.