Putting the Retro in Retrospective

Welcome 2016! It’s a new year and as we are faced with a very cold workshop with nothing but chia seeds inside us to keep us warm, we’ve been thinking retrospectively. During 2015 we fell in love with everything mid century modern; the prints, the fabrics, the styles and the colours. We particularly took a liking to “Ben Chairs”, especially the carver ones with their Art Deco style lines.

What was amazing though as we stripped and ripped out these chairs, was how young they actually were. Ours have a date stamp of 1990’s – not exactly mid century!

We believe the chairs were probably used in an office but decided to recover using a vibrant orange vinyl on the armchairs but a grey vinyl on the others. Pictures of the re-upholstery process can be found in the gallery section of the website.

These chairs are incredibly popular but we would like to give potential buyers a few points to look out for:

• The bottom of the seat should have a hole in it with elasticated webbing. If there in a piece of ply board covering the hole, they wont be particularly comfortable.
• Likewise if the elasticated webbing is fraying, the chair seat will need to be completely ripped back.
• Date stamps can be deceiving, make sure that 1969 isn’t actually 1989.
• The way the backs are put together mean it can be tricky to put them back together, check there are no wobbles.
• If the chairs have been covered in vinyl which has rips or tears, it is more cost effective to replace the vinyl rather than patch it up.