Fit for a Greek Goddess

We picked these babies up from the Tender Centre and wish now that we'd got the other two. Alas, space has become such an issue (we're expecting the 'Hoarders' TV crew to arrive at any minute) and they were in such poor condition that we knew they would be a big job. Here they are in a processional stage of undress from fully clothed on the front lawn to 1st layer off on the front verandah, then stripped to the bone in the backyard. Wish I could be so bold on a hot day but I don't want to frighten the neighbours.

We wanted to do something a bit different with these and got very excited when we came across the Greek Goddess with the mostest, Thea & Sami, her fabulous linen range and her gorgeous hand screenprints (she's also a supreme blogger, you can visit her blog here). So we went with something very femme, pink actually, and asked Thea if she could do some custom printing on it with her beautiful 'Marguerite' design. It arrived in a blink of an eye.

Here she is getting her first fitting. And below, the final result.

We didn't think the yellow tones of Danish Oil on teak would have blended so well with the pink so we lime-washed the wood and then Danish Oiled it and were very happy with the result. We've used neutral linen for the piping, borders of the cushion and back of the chair and nickel tack detailing for a bit of bling. Stay tuned for more photos to come in Elissa's shop, Evoke.

Florence, the Original Style Queen

I mentioned in the last post how this whole upholstery venture started over a conversation about Florence Broadhurst.

Image from www.florencerugs.com.au

Last year while in Sydney for Mardi Gras, we visited Vampt Vintage Design and our eyes boggled out of our heads at their two levels of incredible mid-century furniture. We also noticed a sample folder of Florence Broadhurst fabrics and probably squealed and dribbled. Well, the lovely Dave at Vampt actually offered to give us a lift to Signature Prints, the custodians of Florence's designs, where they still print (by hand) from her original designs. We were given a tour of the warehouse and it was the absolute highlight of our Sydney trip.

Florence was born in 1899 and her life story is an incredible read - a cross-dressing, banjolele playing vaudeville stage star in Shanghai, a couturier in London, a self-proclaimed 'best Australian artist', a trucking company owner and an innovative designer of wallpaper. She started screen-printing wallpaper in the early sixties and was tragically murdered in 1977. Owners of Signature Prints, Helen and David Lennie revived and catalogued Florence's design legacy and have brought her flamboyant prints to international attention.

It seemed appropriate that the first chair I ever bought from the Tender Centre for $10 (and the only chair I owned for a while whilst going through a monastic phase and living in a 7 x 3m shed with an outside cold water tap) had to have a Florence makeover...

In the shed with Zebedee, RIP my big shadow. The poor old chair had a pillow to make the protruding springs bearable and a sari tied around it to improve on its appearance...slightly.

And finally, after eight years, the stripping process begins..

We use a paint stripper called 'Citrostrip' it's non-toxic and biodegradable.
And here's the finished Florence makeover in our lounge-room, needless to say she's for keeps.

We thought we'd enter an interior design competition recently run by InsideOut magazine. We didn't win but we did feature on their website with this chair as one of the 12 standout entries. We didn't want the paint prize anyway! You can see it here.

A Nod to the Old Bloke

First up, we'd like to say a big thank you to Design*Sponge for featuring us on their 'before and after' page. We thought the computer was having a malfunction when we saw the spike in visitors. Hence I think I've had a touch of stage fright.

We've had lots of emails asking us where we learnt our skills and I thought this an opportune time to introduce you the old bloke, Alan, just in case you thought we'd been studying online DIY tutorials or similar. Katie is Alan's gene recipient (family members are reluctant to use the 'f' word, it was the 70's, it was strict catholicism, it was a small country town, etc). Katie and I were chatting about the awesome Florence Broadhurst one day and the subject of upholstery came up, I said I'd love to learn, Katie said her f#*^er was an upholsterer although she hadn't laid eyes on him in 13 years. So she spoke to her cousin who spoke to her mum who spoke to her brother which was Alan and we received a call for the go ahead to visit him just as the two rivers met in the middle of the road outside Katie's house during the last Lismore flood. We took it as an auspicious sign.

Alan is now in his seventies and has been incredible with imparting his knowledge, sharing his workshop and tools and being on hand to answer all our questions and also do a lot of our sewing. Two years on and the rest is history as they say... in the tradition of gene holder to gene recipient.

Our very first chair, that Alan mostly did, we got it for $3 from the tip, it turned out to be a TH Brown chair, made in Adelaide and a very popular mid-century collectable.

Ruby's Royal Red Chair

Little Ruby. the jack russell was the only living being who could sit comfortably in this grand old chair that belonged her great grandfather (on the human side of the family tree).

It's most recent refurb seemed to be from the 70's - striped poo-gold velvet. But the stuffing, oh lordy, it was like a bio-hazard ready to unleash the plague on us. Katie put her hand in that (hell) hole and pulled out spring after spring after spring...

We've found some wierd and gross stuff in the back of chairs but never found a signature before. It's  signed 'J. Wilson Oct 1913' (wonder what he died of?). Image on the right shows the start of the tedious  wood cleaning process, but its always a joy when the wood grain starts to show itself through 100 years or more of grime and dead skin cells (apparently).

16 springs no less, all sanded and oiled - the lengths we go to! 

Now would you look at that! The fabric is 100 percent wool (ecowool) from Sustainable Living Fabrics (I love and admire this company) the colour is 'Poppy'. The finished details of wood work and tacks here on your right, take note of that tacking folks, no staples and hot-glued brocade here thanks, each one hammered in. Ruby, darlin', on your bed!

The lovely Loretta's luscious sun-lounges

When Loretta called us over to see her 1950's sun-lounges, we assured her they should definitely not go to the tip. They were weather beaten and every fitting rusted but we were so pleased that Loretta recognized the beauty of bygone era craftsmanship, saved them, and gave us the opportunity to make them shine.

After hours and hours of meticulous sanding, some stylish canvass choices and some precision tacking...

  

... all that's missing is a cruise ship deck, one of those chicks in the high-waisted, long bottomed, gold bikini, holding a coconut and sipping, with scarlet lips, on a cocktail.

All sleek with there canvass pin-stripes and perfectly spaced brass tacks and golden Danish Oiled teak... ooo, fancy. We were so sad to hand these back, Loretta had to prise them out of our sweaty hands. A couple of weeks later we found two on eBay with their original umbrellas (to keep the sun off the chick in the bikini), so we'll keep you posted on their progress. 

Those beautiful wood-fired plant pots there are from Virginia Jones another of my favourite ceramic artists. Her work is currently available at artisan in Brisbane and Object gallery in Sydney.

From lumpy-bottom to love-chair

Ooo, would you look what came in our front gate!

NO, don't take it inside, bring it here, lets have a look...
Here's one way to solve a sagging spring problem, use 50 or so screws and attach a sheet of ply. Then the springs have no where to go but up which is unfortunately contraindicated to putting your bum down.

 

I call this a frustrating, dust-filled tedious task, Katie, the Stripper, calls it a meditation on layering, a scrutiny of the previous upholsterer's skill (or lack thereof), an appreciation of design and construction and a bonding/getting to know you time for caretaker and forlorn object.

On special occasions, the nanna rug comes out in the kitchen-table/final-touches workshop. Featured on the left is the miracle of a beeswax glow on some lovely grain and here, on your right, we have the almost completed tacking touches. We used that lovely fabric again, the 'Grand Hearts' in Kimono Red by Umbrella Prints. It seems to make people smile. As we pulled up outside the Salvation Army store to deliver the chair to Elissa's shop Evoke, on Carrington St, Lismore, we were offered a home to deliver the chair to and were asked if we were donating it to the Salvos. It made it to Evoke through the pedestrian obstacle course of 3 people (its a busy town) and below is a couple of pics that Elissa took and featured on her blog here. Hearts in the heart of Lismore :-)

Special chairs for special people...

Now, I should clarify, I don't mean 'special', I mean truly special and it's a real privilege to have done these chairs for our lovely friend Sal, who has been one of our biggest supporters since we embarked on the Flourish and Blume journey. We always look forward to an invite to one of Sal's famous parties (our personal favourite being the Sagittarian party, of course) where we get to sit on the verandah of her family beach-house overlooking the ocean (secret, undisclosed location!) and eat locally caught seafood 'til the prawn tails fill the table. We've met some wonderful and interesting women at Sal's and I love it when she instructs them all to feel up the chairs so they get to experience our OCD sanding and polishing.

These chairs have been in Sal's family since the 1950's they are early Parker and solid teak. It seemed to be the style back then to coat the wood in a brown opaque varnish that concealed the beautiful grain or perhaps that was a 70's refurb. Nasty stuff to get off but well worth the effort. They have been recovered in a Prussian blue vinyl.

original condition

Showing backtacking

I'd say these are from the 60's, they have that beautiful Scandinavian-influenced shape to the arms that is very typical of Parker and Fler at that time, no identifiable manufacturers marks though. That very funky bag made out of cowhide on the table there is made by Rachel Ayland, a local bespoke leather bag and shoemaker of jaw-dropping skill.

Send them to the Colonies...

Just over a year ago, I had a space in the Lismore Regional Art Gallery to do a collaborative work with Liz Stops, the fabulous ceramic artist whose work you'll find in just about any Australian Vogue Living or Inside Out magazine or at Planet  and Brenda May Gallery in Sydney. By the time it came around to thinking about the work, I was well and truly romantically involved with chairs, so the initial proposal and its necessary clay fondling took a back seat and something quite different evolved. Liz and I installed in separate windows of the gallery but shared a title and rationale that went something like this: 'using the language of plants and the landscape to discuss issues of colonisation.' It was called 'The Colonisers'.

Hand-drawn wallpaper and embroidered (yes I did it myself) Belgian linen featuring the 'mile-a-minute vine' - a rapid invasive weed species in our local area. There are no 'before' shots of this chair, it was found next to a skip out the front of a house. We loaded it on the ute and made a quick getaway. It's not stealing when it's rubbish, its 'making good use of the things that we find, things that the everyday folk leave behind', dum te de dum te dee dum te de dum.....   Right now I'm being told that writing this will have us sent to the 'penile' colonies. Ha ha, heaven forbid!

Swing it back

We've done a few of these swing back chairs from the 40's. Doesn't look like much, does it?  It was the first matching pair we'd found, I think this is one of them...

Not much prettier at this stage, but could double as a commode. Silky oak frame (sacrilege) and teak arms...

the kitchen table workshop, hammering into the wee hours, how our neighbours love us.

The finished result in Elissa's shop Evoke (if you're near Lismore you can see them in the window next door to Caddies Coffee shop) who provided the handprinted 'hearts and flowers' fabric by Sprout Design. They're only little, don't think many people were 'big boned' in those days but they sure are cute.

These photos taken by Elissa, you can see more images of them on her blog here and here.
ps. these chairs are still for sale in Evoke, contact us for price and delivery quotes Australia wide.

This one's for keeps

Another Tender Centre gem. This couch looked like it had been through a Lismore flood or two - water damaged wood and rotting vinyl although it doesn't look too bad in this photo...

Katie had the unenviable task of stripping it, with its 10 thousand (at least) staples; a layer of cockroach shit an inch thick and a whole lot of lost possessions including car keys...

while I sanded and sanded and sanded...

after and before

then the fun bit...(the very chunky, solid frame is rough sawn silky oak, a tad different to what's hidden beneath contemporary furniture's upholstery - chipboard and staples and not a single spring).

The finished result in our lounge-room, covered in charcoal ecowool from Sustainable Living Fabrics, a company that has very impressive ecological credentials that you can read about here. The wood has had  a couple of coats of Danish Oil and a final polish with beeswax. Those wee porcelain birds in the background are by ceramic artist Mel Robson, if you appreciate amazing craftwomanship, you should see her blog (here).

We loved it and kept it.