Stories in real life rarely have a fairy-tale ending. This one is an exception.
My little furniture-repair challenge (see prior posts) morphed into something more serious. And a lot less fun. As it turns out, the chairs I picked off the curb two decades ago were designed by Adrian Pearsall and produced by his company, Craft Associates.
Source: 1stdibs.com
Pearsall is an acknowledged and prolific American master of mid-century modern design. Mint examples of his work are now treasured by collectors. Here’s an example of a large collection of Pearsall’s creations for sale.
I have no business even owning this pair of chairs, let alone working on them in my garage.
Mea culpa. I’m now that guy, who did that unspeakable thing, to that old treasure. In hindsight, my rehabbing those chairs was:
Kind of like taking a power washer to the Venus de Milo. Effective for removing accumulated grime, yes. Recommended conservation technique, no. And, kind of like hitting a dog with your car. Not really your fault in most cases, but you can’t help feeling bad for what happened, regardless.
To my credit, once I realized what they were, I stopped. Thought long and hard. Made a bunch of plans, starting with my local quality upholstery shop.
Then chucked out all of that planning. Because, as it turns out, a granddaughter of the designer wouldn’t mind having these, as a restoration project. Even in their current dreadful condition.
The ultimate solution to this problem turned out to be my local United Parcel Service (UPS) store, who, for a fee, will crate and ship pretty much anything within reason. Including some torn-apart chairs. And so, in some sense, after a long journey, they are going back home, to be given the restoration they deserve.
The story, linearly, in third person.
Once upon a time, likely in the late 1950s, a career military officer and his wife bought a pair of lounge chairs. These were mid-century-modern chairs, produced by a popular designer in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
This couple then lived in a late-1950s rambler in Vienna VA for the better part of half a century. Colonel Pike passed away around 2005, somewhere in his 80s. His widow went to live near their children in Texas.
His children put most of the contents of the house out on the curb, for a “special pickup” by the Town of Vienna. That is, to be taken to the dump. The furniture placed on the curb, intended for the dump, included those chairs, which at that point were in fine condition. Likely they had been more admired than used over their lifetime so far.
A ten-year-old boy, living across the street, saved those chairs from going to the landfill. These chairs had such an interesting, unique, and eye-catching design that, somehow, this little kid sensed that they were worth keeping. He pestered his father until his father grudgingly agreed to take those chairs off “the neighbor’s junk pile” and keep them. But nothing else. The father, then in his mid-40’s, duly toted the chairs across the street and into the house. The boy’s mother arranged to have all the other usable furniture picked up by various charities.
The chairs were such that the father didn’t even know what to call them. There were no visible maker’s marks or tags. They were shorter in length than a chaise lounge, shorter in height than a typical occasional chair. The frame said “mid-century modern”, the color scheme said 1970s.
At that time, there must have been no picture of this chair posted on the internet. That, or he never found the right words to search for it. Because nothing posted on the internet at that time matched those chairs.
Knowing nothing of their provenance, he assumed they were mid-1970s “Sears Best”, owing to the burnt-orange fabric covering. Just nice middle-class furniture. Whatever they were, the curved foam seat was clearly made for relaxing. They looked about right for watching TV, so he privately dubbed them “TV chairs” and left it at that.
Those TV chairs then got used. A lot. And not gently. The ancient foam rubber hardened and crumbled, and eventually, the seats deteriorated to the point where they couldn’t be used. They sat in a corner of the basement. But they came along when the family moved to a new home.
Many years later — call it 2018 or so — that boy, now a young man, decided to disassemble the chairs, with an eye to rehabbing them. Disassembly, yes. Re-assembly? No.
Now the chairs sat in pieces in the garage, one spring cleaning away from the landfill. But somehow the father just couldn’t pull the trigger on tossing the remains of these chairs in the trash. Something about them said that they were far too nice for that fate, even if they were in pieces.
Move on to 2023. The father, now 65 and retired, was in the midst of a round of Swedish death cleaning. This is fundamentally about disposing of your possessions responsibly, so that your descendants don’t have to dispose of them for you.
In that context, the remains of the chairs were a stopper. They were good for nothing as-is, but something about them still said “way too good to toss out”. After all these years, it was time to make that hard call. Do they go off to the dump, or do they get put back together?
The father opted for putting them back together. Mid-restoration, he realized that he still didn’t know what to call them. But in the intervening two decades, the internet had grown up, and now he had no problem identifying them as Adrian Pearsall chairs.
In the context of Swedish death cleaning, these were now a major problem. He had no business slapping them back together in his garage, using whatever materials were at hand. But, not being a furniture collector, and with no place for them, a professional restoration seemed pointless. They really ought to go to a collector, despite their awful condition.
In the end, it was Pearsall’s son who rescued the chairs. Called in to confirm that these were genuine, he asked around, and, to his surprise, his daughter wanted to take these on.
And that’s where the story ends. The remains of those chairs are now in transit back to the Pearsall family. Where, roughly 70 years after they were made, and a few near-landfill experiences, they may now be restored to something akin to their original state.
By their new owner. The designer’s granddaughter.
The end.
AI images in this post are from Gencraft.com and Freepik AI.
