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!