"Antiques"

We've been looking for nice furniture to replace some of our heavily worn and frankly broken sticks. We put up with our kitchen chairs while they were still spattered with breast milk, but when the backs broke and I glued them together as best I could ... we still put up with them, although we took care not to lean back too hard and get impaled on the broken stumps. But up with that we will no longer put.

There is a nice antique shop at the bottom of the hill that specializes in English 'antiques'. Most of it is stuff from the 60s of the kind that I was brought up with, although they do have some older things. The owners are very engaging and talkative folks and the master of the shop frankly told me, "We make our living from other people's rubbish". I was quite taken with some of their rubbish and purchased a piece.


I don't think they are quite as familiar with English furniture as me, nor as aware of the history of materials. This item they reckoned was '1930s'. But it cries out '1970s!' (or thereabouts). The wooden frame is held together with hex head nuts which weren't used in furniture until fairly recently. And that 'leather' has a distinctly composite look. Indeed, where its slightly ripped, it has a fabric backing that says 'leatherette' to me. Also, to clean it up, I used some Redwing boot fluid on it, and it didn't drink it up like real leather does. Oh, and the leatherette cushion is attached with Velcro, invented in 1941.


Still, it's an exceedingly comfy slouch chair, especially with a slouchy off-center posture, with one leg cast over the side. I'm not sure that 1930s furniture was built to allow slouching quite like that.

We were also looking to replace our battered kitchen chairs, and looked at some real antiques. But most of them were ricketty, especially when they were in sets. Today we bought a fake antique oak chair at a big discount in a sale, and we're hoping to round out the set with three more (a bargain, even at the full price).