When does the game start?

from The New York Times - June 17th, 2009

IS there a piece of furniture more masculine in design and intent than the recliner? With its big, brawny proportions, it's like the offensive lineman of the living room suite. Favored by male sports fans everywhere - and resented as a décor catastrophe by their wives - the chair seems built for maximum sloth.

Too much effort to push back with your body weight? There’s a handy side lever you can operate manually. Don’t feel like getting up to grab a beer? One model has a cooler built into the armrest. It’s as if furniture makers believe the problems plaguing modern man — job insecurity, a withering 401(k), another losing season for the Pirates (my problem, anyway) — can be assuaged with a huge, ridiculously padded chair.

“In my mind, the recliner is made for guys,” said Jason Cameron, the host of a television show called “Man Caves,” in which he designs macho rooms for guys that frequently include a recliner.

“It’s our one token piece,” Mr. Cameron said. “And comfort is No. 1.”

That must be the thinking behind the ComfortTouch, the recliner La-Z-Boy is introducing in time for Father’s Day, which was recently delivered to my apartment for a test drive. Standing before this behemoth, which fit narrowly through the door and devoured a third of my living room, I wondered how many cows sacrificed their lives so I could sit in leathery relaxation and watch “Seinfeld” reruns. By the look of it, a small herd.

The ComfortTouch, which has a base price of about $1,450, is, if not a technological breakthrough, an industry refinement. Both the seat and the back have air chambers and 10 separate “comfort settings,” from zero (softest) to 10 (firmest), giving the chair a staggering 100 seating variations. It also operates by remote control, a clear sign I was no longer in the effete world of Eames.

Hunkering down in the ComfortTouch one evening to gorge on mindless TV, I was struck by the outsize proportions of recliners. Invented in 1929 by the founders of La-Z-Boy, the chair has grown proportionally along with Americans’ appetites, culinary and other. Even in this age of slimming prospects and diminished bank accounts, when the square footage of many new homes is shrinking, most models have kept their girth intact.

As a business strategy, that seems limiting, given that it alienates half the consumer public. But recliners have been marketed almost exclusively to men for decades anyway. As Mr. Cameron suggested, it’s all about a guy’s comfort.

“No one wants a piece of furniture that looks spectacular but is like sitting on a rock,” said Doug Collier, a La-Z-Boy executive, explaining the bigger-is-better approach. “Having that size to support a comfortable seat and a mechanism has lent itself to a larger scale.”

So important is this notion of comfort to La-Z-Boy’s product development, the company has identified a subset of buyer dubbed the “comfort seeker.”

“When they entertain, it’s not to show off their house, but to enjoy their house,” Mr. Collier said. “They’re not going to sacrifice comfort for style.”

The ComfortTouch clashed conspicuously with my retro aesthetic, so I was certainly sacrificing style. Oddly, though, I wasn’t all that comfortable. The back was rigid, even at the lowest setting, which made it difficult to sink into the cushions.

Mr. Collier explained that the ComfortTouch has a firmer lumbar due to its slimmer profile. As La-Z-Boy recliners go, he said, it was barely midsize.

THAT got me thinking about other recliners on the market, especially those truck-size models that lull their occupants into a junk-food-eating, “SportsCenter”-watching stupor. Which is how I ended up at Albert’s Furniture Gallery in Farmingdale, on Long Island, a store that claims to have the largest selection of Lane recliners in the New York metropolitan area.

Michael LaCorte, a sales representative for Lane with a decade in what he called “the motion business,” took me around the showroom. Many of the lines had names that sounded vaguely narcoleptic: Comfort King, Leather Essentials and Easy Glide.

Pointing to a Bunyanesque model swaddled in greenish fabric, Mr. LaCorte said: “Now that’s your Big Man’s chair. That’s for the 300-pound ex-football player.”

I’m no big man, but I couldn’t resist climbing aboard. Suddenly, I felt like Edith Ann, swinging my legs furiously in search of terra firma. The $565 recliner provided comic relief — and emasculation — but not much comfort.

Instead, Mr. LaCorte suggested the Saturn, which sells for about $700, saying: “When the people from Architectural Digest come to your house, they’re not going to shoot this. This is den furniture.”

While the ComfortTouch has fairly clean lines for a recliner, the Saturn has virtually no lines. It’s not so much a chair as a giant pillow wrapped in leather. Features include a “back within a back” cushion and “pad over chaise” ottoman — fancy industry terms that mean there’s enough polyester fiberfill in there to stuff an elephant.

The Saturn is also a glider, moving backward and forward by way of an undercarriage mechanism, which, I have to admit, is incredibly soothing. “If you get in that glider at 10, you don’t see 10:30,” Mr. LaCorte said. It wasn’t sales talk; within five minutes I was dozing in the showroom like an overworked long-haul trucker.

THIS was all well and good, but I began to wonder if there wasn’t a recliner that was less “offensive” — Mr. LaCorte’s word, not mine — in its styling. A chair made to appeal to design buffs, or at least to city dwellers with limited space.

As it turns out, there is. Design Within Reach’s Flight recliner has floating legs and resembles a ’50s club chair. And the German furniture company Rolf Benz just introduced a sleek model called the Ego, with a base price of around $7,000 that may have something to do with its name.

For those who question the merits of owning a recliner, buying one that costs more than a used car seems particularly suspect. Why the high price tag?

“It’s made in Germany,” explained Dagmar Rittenbacher, the New York showroom manager, when I stopped by the New York Design Center to find out.

The logic seemed questionable. True, German engineering is extolled, but does that mean we should pay $1,000 for a toothbrush if it comes from Stuttgart?

Nevertheless, I had to admit the Ego is an exceptional recliner, if overpriced. Set on a round chrome base, it appears to float, and there’s no arm lever to clutter up its appearance. Instead, it reclines under shifting body weight. Between the adjustable headrest and the supple leather, you can virtually mold the chair to your body.

If Ms. Rittenbacher’s attitude was any indication, though, the Ego isn’t stylish enough to overcome the great recliner barrier: appealing to women. When asked if she’d put the chair in her own living room, Ms. Rittenbacher shrugged.

“I like the sofa,” she said. “You can share a sofa with somebody. You can’t share a recliner.”

Predictably, her male co-worker preferred the recliner.