Rare Unusual Ercol

Each week we open up the workshop never quite knowing what we’ll find and a few weeks ago Dave had left an unusual Ercol Wooden Armchair that had arrived via Keith our furniture restorer. The Pirelli webbing required replacing which was not a problem but we had not seen this type of Ercol before or even the metal clips that held the webbing in place.

Usually with Ercol furniture, the webbing is held either with dowels and studs or with standard metal clips that drop into a recess within the frame.

Rare Ercol Armchair

Rare Ercol Armchair

Standard Dowel Holes

Standard Dowel Holes

At the rear of the frame there were holes that usually we would expect to go right through and then the webbing would be held in place with the webbing wrapped around a dowel and then secured using metal studs (similar process to stud work on leather work). However, on this chair the holes did not go right though!

No holes

No holes

We decided to give Ercol a call as on closer inspection of the clips, the rear metal ones were different to the standard ones and had teeth on the outside and none of our upholstery suppliers had heard of them. Unfortunately, Ercol were unable to tell us the chair model or shed any light on sourcing the clips so we had to reuse the existing ones.

Unusual Ercol clips with teeth.

Unusual Ercol clips with teeth.

The clips were then attached to the webbing in a certain way and pushed back into the holes at the rear of the frame. The webbing is then held in place by metal teeth on the clip “grabbing” the wood when sitting and the front webbing being attached with standard clips dropped vertically into the frame.

New Pirelli Webbing

New Pirelli Webbing

We’ve  looked in all the Ercol catalogues and believe it is some form of “Lounge” Chair or “Easy” Chair from the 1980s or 1990s but if anyone could let us know the model number, we would be grateful for reference purposes. We expect that Ercol didn’t use this particular method for webbing for very long as the webbing straps can be pulled out quite easily!