If you could close your eyes and picture the perfect chair—four-legged, light, impossibly sturdy, elegant but without trying too hard—it would be the Chiavarina. No excess, no frills, just a chair distilled into its purest form. And while it may seem like the unassuming workhorse of countless dining rooms, for over 200 years, the chair has been the darling of royals, the muse of modernists, and a quiet icon of Italian design.

As the name implies, the chair comes from Chiavari—a seaside town on the Ligurian Riviera di Levante between Portofino and the Cinque Terre—where, in 1807, Stefano Rivarola, president of the Economic Society of Chiavari, returned from his travels through France.