I'm a little undercover. I'm at the New York edition hotel just off of Madison Square Park.

It's incredibly chic. Thank cream-colored walls and soft candlelight in the evening,

and the lobby is populated with amorphous couches that look like sculptures and I can only

assume they're Italian or Scandinavian. And then there are these two chairs that look really out of

place. I asked you a question about this chair you're sitting in. Is it comfortable? No, we're all.

Because there's only one open and I'm waiting for a room. That's very funny. While the rest of the

lobby oozes luxurious cosmopolitan minimalism, these chairs look a little janky. They're simple,

they're wood, with netting where a cushion would be. And they look a little worn, a little rigid,

the screws coming out. Kind of like something you would have made in shop class. But also,

it would have earned you an A+. Because they're interesting looking. The legs connected and upside-down

V shape. And the armrest sits at the point of the V. And that V shape is a really distinct style.

And if those chairs are what I think they are, then they have a very interesting backstory.

Are those chairs real? The man sitting in the uncomfortable chair tells me he doesn't think so.

He says he knows when furniture is valuable and when it's not. I think the man at the front desk

is asking someone who would know. I asked the bartender, I asked the concierge, and it takes someone

from the back to come out to confirm my hunch about these particular chairs. That they are indeed

real. And they are indeed special. And not just because they're incredibly expensive and valuable,

or because I've seen pictures of those same chairs in Courtney Kardashian's dining room.

I grew up around these chairs. We have a whole bunch at home. I have some here in the United

States. This is Vikram Prakash, professor of architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle.

But he grew up in a city in India called Chandagar. The town where the chairs are from. They were

everywhere. I grew up in it every day of my life. And I love it. It's beautiful. But I do

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