Hospice for Old Chairs

No two chairs in our house match.  There are no pairs of chairs.  Instead there is a collection of randomly acquired dining chairs for which the only things they have in common is high back and made of oak.  Some are modern. Some are very old. One is a ‘carver’ with a woven cane seat insert, the others have seat covers in a collection of colours and materials.

Armchairs follow the same pattern: old, new, leather, cloth, one turns on its base, one has tiny castors.  One has no arms and is quite low (possibly formerly a ‘bedroom chair).  None of them match the settee (either of the settees – which don’t match each other), and they get paired with a random collection of props used for footstools.

Ours is a retirement home for chairs that other people discard it seems.

This theme continues out onto the balcony – but there two deckchairs scavenged together have been renovated to deckchair pairing.  The rest are also randomly acquired director’s chairs (painted and re-canvassed), plastic garden chairs (the broken parts they were discarded on account of, bolted or wired back together), or folding wooden dining chairs (broken slats replaced in the seat).

F scavenges chairs.  She possibly doesn’t think of it as scavenging; maybe she sees us as a hospital for chairs, a retirement home for those who have given a lifetime of service and still have something to contribute.  Or possibly a hospice where they can die in dignity.

The latest adoptee might be beyond rescue however; another high-backed dining chair, but this one isn’t made of oak so it might not be comfortable with the company here. 

Before she remembered to take a photo to blog, she had stripped it of its tattered soft parts, rusted springs, and what she described as “half a hundred weight of staples, tacks and upholstery nails”.  I cannot abide exaggeration (except perhaps when describing rats I have wrestled with).  I made her weigh them.  Three and half ounces; a serving of wet catfood if you prefer my measurement system.

Now it is in pieces under some heavy weights on the back balcony, because those strange angles you may be able to detect in the photo are not perspective distortion.  It’s warped.  Its left side legs are galloping forwards (actually if both left side legs are moving together its pacing forwards isn’t it?)

Like I said this one might be beyond her capacity to rescue it.