And Then There Was Another Chair

I suppose once you start looking for chairs, you begin to see them everywhere. Or perhaps I had already become a little bit obsessed.

This was during the same period when I was living in Buenos Aires and after I finished my little painted chair from the Mercado de Pulgas de Dorrego.

I was driving home from work one afternoon, taking the same route I always took, when I passed a street corner that had always caught my attention.

It wasn’t a normal corner. Instead of the expected ninety-degree meeting of two streets, it came to a point – a little triangular space that made the intersection rather unusual.

And right at that point was the door to a place that repaired furniture.

They often had all sorts of things sitting outside: old furniture waiting for some attention, pieces that had been rescued and were waiting for another life. Old pieces of wood stacked and waiting… And every so often some metal unidentified something or other.

On this particular day, I glanced over.

And there it was.

A chair.

Well, most of a chair.

It was missing the seat.

And the back.

But the frame was beautiful.

I drove around the corner, stopped the car, got out and went back to look at it properly.

I stared.

Then, of course, I bought it. But I had to convince the store owner to sell it to me as he knew it was a good chair and he did not want to part with it. After a long conversation, we agreed on a price.

There was really no question of me leaving without it.

I put it in the trunk of my car and took it home, and soon enough I was back at the carpenter’s shop.

He fitted a new back for me, and once again I had a chair waiting for an idea.

At the time, the office where I worked was just around the corner from the most magnificent decorator shop. It was one of those places I could never resist going into. They had beautiful fabrics, remnants and bargain bins upstairs, and they were wonderfully creative themselves. I remember being fascinated by the pillows they made from their fabric samples. And if you are wondering … yes, I have a few.

And then one day I found it.

A piece of linen covered with peonies that I fell in love with. So I bought I think a metre and brought it home and began thinking about how I could use one of the peony designs on my chair. I know … I could not resist the red background …

By then, I sort of knew what I was doing. Or at least I thought I did. I carefully reproduced one of the floral designs so that I could paint it onto the back of the chair.

And once again, I spent hours painting.

There is something quite meditative about painting onto a piece of furniture. It is not quite like painting on canvas. The shape is already there. You have to work around it, follow it, understand where the design wants to go.

Eventually, the peony was finished.

And then came the final transformation.

I had the chair upholstered in mossy green velvet.

And suddenly, there it was.

A chair that had begun as a forgotten frame on a street corner had become something completely different.

I think that is what I love about these chairs.

Neither of them started out as beautiful, finished objects.

The first was missing a seat.

The second was missing a seat and a back.

They were both, in their own ways, incomplete.

But I never looked at them and saw what was missing.

I saw what could be there.

I found a carpenter for the pieces they needed. I found lace for one and fabric for the other. And then I spent hours painting, experimenting and figuring things out as I went.

Looking back, I realize that this is probably not such a surprising way for me to have approached a chair.

Or perhaps it explains quite a lot about the way I work now.

I am still drawn to things that have a history. Things that have been used and loved. Things that might be missing something, or might simply be waiting for someone to see them differently.

A piece of old fabric.

A bit of lace.

A button.

A photograph.

A chair.

Sometimes the interesting part isn’t what something is when you find it.

It’s what might happen next.

And that second chair, found on a strange little triangular street corner in Buenos Aires, gave me another opportunity to find out.

Thanks for reading. Until I write again … I’m off to dream of chairs.

Ana

P.S. If you’ve been feeling the urge to sit down, slow down, and spend a little time stitching, my Come Sit With Me scroll kits are now available online in four colourways. You can find all the details on my website here.