Merry Christmas

It’s been a while. Thank you to all our clients over the years. Number 10 Upholstery has officially retired.

Some of us have been retired for a while – We are still contactable through the website for the time being but we are no longer taking on any commissions. We may sometimes post items for sale whilst we endeavour to clear out the workshop.

Thank you again, Happy Christmas and all the best for the future.

We have continued working but due to family shielding and commitments, we’ve not been at full capacity but realise we’re lucky that we’ve been keeping safe and relatively sane. Be aware though that it may take longer to reply to enquiries either via phone or email.

We would like to share something a bit different that we’ve worked on and that’s a Land Rover Defender conversion carried out by the very talented Birdboxhouse.com. We are just blown away by the quality of the conversion skills and we’ve been happy to provide the upholstery for it.

The interior cushions have been covered in a marine style fabric to help with the rugged use and please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’re looking for a conversion or looking to refresh any camper cushions.

Land Rover Defender Interior

Upholstery Detail

Land Rover Defender Detail

Land Rover Defender Cushion

Land Rover Defender Conversion

We haven’t seen anything quite like them before and believe they were purchased from Arding & Hobbs department store at Clapham junction during the late 50s/ early 60s.

They are completely original although missing their seat cushions and have never been reupholstered. They have a metal frame but with Pirelli webbing on the seat and back, held in place with metal clips and brackets. The arms have a layer of horsehair and foam has been used before the top cover which has been secured in place by pop on rivets similar to ones found on a classic car tonneau cover. The material used to cover the metal frame on the inside arms is black and similar to again a classic car door panel – one can see it under the horsehair in one of the pictures. The back cushions are also filled with horsehair and the legs are wood but a typical mid century shape.  Some aspects of their design echo Ernest Race and his Flamingo chair and if anyone can shed some light on these, it would be greatly appreciated. We don’t want to start restoring them just yet in case they are something special. That and they look as if they’ll be a nightmare to do…laughing face.

In the words of Toyah….it’s a mystery.

Clips holding top fabric cover in place

Back of chair

Rivets holding back cushion in place

Pirelli Webbing held in place with rivets

Underneath chair, no makers mark

Unusual metal clips holding webbing in place.

Arms with thin layer of horsehair

Mystery mid century chairs

Pirelli webbing on the back but not as wide as Ercol webbing

Side View

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

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

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.

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

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!

We don’t mind this indecision as fashions change. We have a huge quantity of fabric in the workshop that is testament to this….we thought it would look great on a chair, only when we actually got round to do it, we had found a far more gorgeous fabric that would look even more perfect. The problem with this indecision, is that we just don’t have the capacity.

A few years ago we had a space in a vintage sales room and to keep our stock up to date and constantly turning round, we decided we needed to double our space in order to have somewhere to store items. We had already filled our own garages at home, half the workshop and our offsite storage facility so you could see our predicament. We took on another unit next to our workshop. Now these units are not tiny, around 75 square metres…each… Fast forward a few years and the constant pressure of making sure the shop front was kept current was too much to balance with other commitments. Basically we got fed up with spending every Friday night at the auction sourcing new stock….rock n roll. Alas, we said goodbye to our next door unit and had a massive clear out. Oh boy…if you have space, you easily fill it and it was a mammoth task….only we didn’t really clear it out….we crammed every piece we could into the workshop, home and off site storage.

Unfortunately, we are now in the process of having a further clear out and have some great chairs that need to go. If you are after an upholstery project or would like us to reupholster them in your choice of fabric then let us know.

Antique Elbow Chair

Pair of Art Deco Utility 1930s/40s Bentwood Banana Rocking Chairs

Excellent quality Victorian nursing chair

Victorian Library Chair

Antique Armchair

Edwardian Chaise Longue

Vintage Blue Button Back Tub Chair

Antique small Chair

It’s certainly been eventful and to be honest, we’ve not had much time to update our Facebook page, let alone the website. We’re too small to employ a social media expert especially as all three of us have spent too many years in the IT world, it would be a tad embarrassing to “get someone in”.

With the schedule already booked up until April 2018, we’re going to be spending the run up to Christmas, fulfilling our order book and getting those chairs ready for the festive period, having already not had time to make our annual pilgrimage to Decorex.

Following last years failure to have a Christmas party too, we at least have decided on a date that we are all in the country, let alone the county or the workshop. Sometimes you have to prioritise what is important in life and spending time with friends and family is certainly that.

Unfortunately, we are at that age where we start to understand why our parents had those awful suites back in the 1970s, it’s because they were so comfortable.

Now we’ve got a confession to make…we have a fabulous Victorian Chesterfield in the workshop. It’s gorgeous and at one point it will make the trip home but it’s no good for our backs. It’s perfectly OK to sit on whilst we have a coffee break listening to Popmaster but can we see ourselves snuggled up on it in front of the television? No…we see it gorgeously reupholstered in a posh drawing room ready for a magazine photo shoot.

In real life and at our age, we argue over the one and only Parker Knoll type chair or the Victorian Iron Back. A few years ago I think some friends laughed at the funny old fashioned looking chair in the room but now, even after many yoga sessions, they are the ones asking if we can source something similar and then jazz it up with a slice of fabulous fabric to fit in with their contemporary sofas.

As William Morris said…

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

With this in mind, we currently cannot get enough of inspiring retro armchairs as they are not only useful but beautiful too.

As our skills have grown so have our requirements for our sewing machines so we thought we would share “our stable”.

Vintage Singer 201K – Kay’s first purchase for the very start of the AMUSF course, a proper workhorse and only 80 years young! This is a brilliant machine and hugely reliable. Only due to the fact that it is a straight stitch machine, that it now only gets used for certain fabrics or if one of the other machines require a service.

Bernina Record 930 Electronic – A masterpiece of Swiss engineering, purchased off a local classified website and still the most expensive machine in the workshop, second-hand. All metal gears and brilliant to sew with, even the sewing machine service man advises never to sell it….”they don’t make them like this any more…”. Manages with a variety of fabrics but not keen on thick thread. The fancy stitching it is able to produce means that it can replicate an overlocking type stitch.

Janome Sewist 525s – Cally’s machine of choice and beloved of sewing programs and highly recommended in many reviews. This is a favourite with many of our fellow upholsterers as it copes with all different types of fabric and thickness’s. Very capable without breaking the bank.

New Home Overlocker  My Lock 134D – Believe it or not this was nearly thrown out…In fact out of all the sewing machinery this is the one which can be a complete nightmare and behaves like at teenager. One of Cally’s purchases many many years ago and left in the attic until our “Bee” cushions became popular. It was bought to the workshop to see if it could be of use and provides a very professional finish to the cushions. One needs a degree in threading to get the machine up and running and it’s not keen on different fabrics or zip seams. Or if there is a “y” in the day. It doesn’t like the cold either. Causes tension with it’s tension. Loved and hated in equal frustrated measure but we could not do without it.

Vintage Singer Featherweight 222K – Our baby. Found lurking in a house clearance shop that really should have known better. Complete with box, keys, manuals and attachments. We managed to knock the price down from the already sub £30 price tag due to the fact it wasn’t working, but as any vintage Singer aficionado knows, it’s very rare that these machines break. On closer inspection back in the workshop, the bobbin casing had been put in the wrong way and once this was rectified, ding dong. Taken out once in a while to keep her ticking over and a complete dream to use.

Wimsew 3300-1 Walking Foot Industrial Machine – The “Beast” came into our lives via a retired local upholsterer. It took a good few days of faffing and fiddling to get to grips with it but it powers though vinyl and more importantly many layers of fire retardant coated fabric. Piped boxed cushions are a breeze with this monster.

No wait…in reality this means a muddy track up to the workshop, A workshop that gets so dark by 4pm, we need to fire up lights that would not be out of place on a premiership football pitch and zero heating. All of us at Number 10 like the sun, we should have been born in warmer climes that’s for sure. Whilst the black dog hits most of us from time to time, it seems evermore present on these cold, harsh days, When we feel like this, sometimes its worth reminding ourselves about the positives that surround us. Such as:-

• Autumn brings us the sloe gin, raspberry vodka and other alcoholic beverage delights brewing in a darkened corner waiting for Christmas.
• That crisp blue sky day walking down the beach which is completely empty because the holidaymakers are long gone.
• Never having to do that appraisal which is directly related to our bonus. Ever again.
• Worrying about sweating onto the clients £150 pm fabric.
• There is always a fellow upholsterer with a nightmare job which is far worse than anything we have seen.
• Day trips to see new fabric collections or sample/second sales.
• Daniel Craig in Spectre…or any film for that matter.
• The smell of fireworks and bonfires.
• Workshop Christmas Party

We believe that you can always turn a negative into a positive….so what if you mistakenly bought that roll of wrong size stockinette off a well known auction site – it may not fit around any cushions but it makes a great “Mummy” for Halloween.