I was going to write this post yesterday, but the internet was down for the whole day. Actually, the the internet was fine. It seems my brain was on hiatus: the plug for the wireless modem had come out of the wall. Ah, well. Techno-whiz, I have never claimed to be.
Not all was lost because it actually turned out to be a very productive day with no internet temptation to distract me. I got a lot of music learned for various shows that are coming up (I’ll write more on this later). And I got a good chunk of the corrections done on an article I’m writing to submit to the journal Psychology of Music. Yay me. *pats self on head*
And as a result, I’ve decided to declare Tuesday INTERNET INTERDICTION DAY. If anyone wants to reach me on a Tuesday they can call or send smoke signals. I won’t be checking my email, or Facebook, or anything. Feel free to join me. Not that I’ll know that you have. Until you email me on Wednesday to let me know. I can see this getting complicated…
Moving on.
Today’s topic is actually an update on last week’s antique furniture restoration class. Recall that Jocelyn (my antique chair) that was given to my by Jocelyn (my friend) to work on until I muster up the courage to buy the giant Art Deco wardrobe that I saw a few weeks ago and have been dreaming about since. *sweet, sweet wardrobe*
I promised that I would find out some more about Jocelyn (chair) last week and so I did. Here is a picture of the auction tag that was on one of the legs:
It translates as:
Ladies small armchair on nut wood legs, a mahogany wooden chair, a nut wooden chair.
Or something like that. Any Dutchies out there who want to to correct me, or tell me what nut wood is, are more than welcome to comment.
As I progressed last week with the removal of Jocelyn’s old fabric (Jocelyn chair, of course… Jocelyn friend’s fabric is just fine), I was amazed to discover the sheer amount of effort involved in making an antique such as this. Besides the outer fabric are the many layers of lining, stuffing, string, padding, and dirt. Astonishing.
And imagine my surprise when I came upon this layer, which I have dubbed “Tom Selleck”:
Turns out this layer of dense padding is paardenhaar (horse hair). Horse hair is very coarse and springy. It’s also very expensive, so unlike the other layers of stuff-n-such that I turfed directly in the bin, I was advised to set the horse hair aside to be reused (don’t tell anyone but I may keep some to make a ‘fro wig for Halloween). it must be mentioned that horse hair is also very pubic-looking and thus the inspiration of many eye-rolling jokes in the class. I pretended to be really embarrassed by the jokes. Which was much more fun than joining in.
As I made my way through the forest of the Selleck family tree, I made another discovery. I mentioned in the last post that the chair had been restored before, yes? Well, it turns out that the last restoration covered over a very cool feature underneath the many layers. The tufted original!:
I guess the last restorer was either trying to modernize the look of this old chair by giving it a smooth back, or he/she just couldn’t be bothered with the effort involved in tufting fabric.
And now I had the same choice: do I go the easy route and cover the chair back over with a heap of Selleck horse hair and fabric, or do I take the more challenging road of restoring the chair to its original tufted glory?
Well, if you know me at all by now, you will know that my premature grey hairs are gleefully self-induced:
Early grave, here I come.
