The Chair from the Flea Market

I was thinking about chairs at 2:30 in the morning.

This probably won’t surprise anyone who has been following along lately. I’ve been thinking about chairs quite a bit – what they look like, how they feel, the shape of them, what they are made for, and why some chairs seem to call my name while others don’t interest me at all.

But last night I started thinking about two particular chairs I bought when I was living as an expat in Buenos Aires.

And I realized that perhaps my fascination with chairs goes back much further than I thought.

When I was a child, my parents had two Art Deco chairs in their bedroom. They were wonderfully rounded and enclosed, almost like little cocoons, and I loved sitting in one of them when the sun was shining on it.

I still have one of those chairs in my bedroom.

Perhaps I’ve been collecting chairs – and the feeling of them – for much longer than I realized.

One of those chairs began with a Saturday morning and my mom.

We decided to go to the Mercado de Pulgas de Dorrego, one of the most wonderful and unusual antique markets in Buenos Aires. At least it was then.

I wish I had a photograph of the Mercado de Pulgas as I remember it. But, I don’t. So you’ll just have to come along with me and imagine it …

Located on Avenida Dorrego, the market was housed under a very old tin roof, with dirt floors and a jumble of stalls packed with all sorts of things. It was not the polished, carefully curated kind of antique market you might find today. It was wonderfully chaotic.

There were piles and piles of old newspapers and magazines, many of them moldy and wonderfully smelly. They looked as though they might tumble over at any moment and bury the person who owned them.

Usually that person was sitting nearby on a little wooden stool, drinking mate, with a dog somewhere close by.

And if you were looking for something in particular, you could ask. The answer was usually a point toward one of the enormous piles. Somehow, they knew exactly where everything was.

There were stalls filled with old glass, trinkets, furniture and all manner of things that had clearly had another life before arriving there.

And then there was the water.

Because of the way the market was situated, there were little rivulets of water running through it, particularly when it was raining outside. You had to walk carefully, jumping over puddles, little streams and muddy patches as you made your way around.

I loved it.

I still remember the atmosphere of that place – the smell, the dampness, the piles of things, the characters sitting among their treasures. It was the kind of place where you could go looking for one thing and come home with something you had never imagined finding.

Which is exactly what happened to me.

Somewhere among all that wonderful stuff, I spotted a small chair.

It was missing its seat.

But oh, the lines.

I fell in love with it immediately.

Of course, I had to take it home.

Once I got it back to the house, I went for a walk in the neighbourhood to a little street where there were several antique and old-stuff shops operating out of people’s homes. I had a feeling that somewhere along that street I would find a carpenter who could make a new seat for my little chair.

I did.

I left the chair with him, although I remember being a little nervous about it. What if it wasn’t what I imagined?

A few days later, I went back to pick it up.

It was perfect.

He had made an oak seat that matched the rest of the chair beautifully, and suddenly I had something I could work with.

Because, you see, I had an idea.

At the time I was taking painting lessons, and I apparently liked a good challenge.

The next step was to go downtown to one of the more exclusive fabric stores and find a piece of lace that I loved. I found an Italian lace that was absolutely perfect. It was also rather expensive. But I only needed a small piece.

I brought it home and began figuring out how I could turn the lace pattern into something I could paint onto the wooden seat.

And then I painted.

And painted.

And painted.

Painting a pattern onto the seat of a chair while it sat on my table was a rather unusual experience. It took much longer than I expected, but I loved every minute of it.

Eventually, it was finished.

And then I did something that, at the time, seemed perfectly reasonable: I entered my little painted chair into a local painting competition.

It was featured in the magazine.

I was thrilled.

Looking back, I think what I loved most wasn’t simply the finished chair. It was the whole process of finding it, imagining what it could become, finding the person who could make the missing piece, searching for the perfect lace, and then figuring out how to translate that pattern from lace into paint.

I didn’t really buy a chair that morning.

I bought an idea.

And perhaps that is one of the reasons I have always had such a soft spot for chairs.

They are useful, of course. They give us somewhere to sit.

But sometimes, if we are lucky, they give us somewhere to begin.

And that little chair began with a Sunday morning, my mom, a muddy flea market in Buenos Aires, and a missing seat.

Thanks for reading. Until I write again … no, I won’t go looking for any more chairs. Not for a while at least. I promise …

Ana