Ethiopian Bench with Plaited Leather Seat

The backrest is the loud part. The seat, plaited in leather, keeps its counsel.

This bench with a plaited leather seat comes from Ethiopia, East Africa, and dates to the late 19th or early 20th century, in painted wood and leather. Ethiopia has its own long Christian tradition, and benches decorated with crosses seated family, guests and elders while declaring the faith of the household. Here red crosses and green leaves flank a stacked central motif, set among zigzags cut into the wood. A shaped arm rises at one end. The open leather lattice below sags gently, and the square legs end in stepped feet. Seventy-four inches long and thirty-three high.

It is a great deal of bench, and it knows it.