Thursday, August 26, 2010

New Seats!


For those of you that know George the Elder and I - and have known us from the beginning of our relationship - you know that we struggled mightily early on with merging our respective decorating genres. I leaned towards wingbacks and chintz. He leaned towards garbage bags and duct tape. It was misery. Sheer unadulterated misery.

Then one day, we saw a table in a deco store in Alexandria VA. We both turned, pointed and said simultaneously, "I love that table!" And the journey began. We couldn't afford that table when we saw it. Freddie Mac didn't pay us much in them there olden days. But we started collecting other pieces and little by little, year by year, we've gotten ourselves a buncha stuff by this guy named Warren McArthur. It's a kind of anodized aluminum glorified lawn furniture kind of theme. He designed his furniture in the 30's and 40's - kind of a machine age moderne if you will. (For the curious sort...if you click on the little chair at the top you can go to a site that shows you a smattering of McArthur stuff - so you can get an idea.)

There are a couple of dealer folks that find McArthur stuff on a regular basis. We keep track of them. And, there are two modern auctions every year - one in Chicago, one in New York. Basically, we keep our eyes peeled for what's coming up. It's fun when you find it. It's even better when you get it "on the cheap." Doesn't happen often, but when it does - wunderbar!

The challenge is that when you get the pieces, the upholstery is what the upholstery is. Sometimes it's original. Sometimes it's not. Always it doesn't coordinate with what you already have. We have a beautiful chaise lounge upholstered in early Fred Flinstone fuzzy gold. But, we haven't spent much time getting it redone (with the exception of a couch or two here and there). We've been waiting. For what, I didn't know - - and then came the CMR and I guess we were waiting for that!

Our dining room chairs were one of those things that when we got them they had the original pleather covering. It was kind of a greenish-blue-ish color. The seats were old and worn, but we didn't do anything about it. Even when Henry busted through his seat two years ago, we didn't do anything about it 'cept to run out to grab a piece of semi-coordinating pleather and attack the chair with a staple gun. This summer - - well it was time to do something about it. And...

Tada!! I am in LOVE. I could kiss them I love them so much.






We love red. Real red. Real RAL 3000 kind of red. We've used it for stuff in the past. But red can be tricky. It's hard to match. It's hard to be double dare sure. When we looked at the pleather/naugahyde books the samples come in these baby-pinky-finger swatches. We "thought" we had it right. I sweated it out until the chairs came back and Saints Be Praised! It's the right red. I have done it wrong in the past. It wasn't without precidence. You think the red is right and then you realize it matches the rest of your stuff like the red lipstick on Jack Nicholson's Joker Face. Just plain SCARY.

But this time. I am in love. With a set of chairs. And I'm not even embarassed to admit it. They look mediocre in our temporary apartment - but in the words of Tony the Tiger - they're gonna be ggrrrrrrrrrEAT - in the CMR when it is done. GRRRRREAT!!

2 comments:

TNgrammy said...

The chairs are awesome!!! I love the red-red...

KB said...

Fffffantastic!