My recent foray into furniture repair has turned into a lesson on why you should do you own Swedish death cleaning as you age.
To recap, this is what is left of a pair of chairs that got tossed to the curb, across the street from me, here in the middle-class suburbs of DC. They were in great shape when I picked them off the curb, but years of use by my kids took their toll on the half-century-old fabric and foam.
These were discarded, in excellent condition, alongside heaps of other household goods, by the children of an elderly, recently-widowed woman. Her kids were clearing out her house, as they prepared to move their mother down to Texas to be near them.
At that time, I couldn’t find any images of these on the internet. I assumed they were 1970s Sears knockoffs of a mid-century-modern design. Or similar. Middle-class couple, middle-class house. Surely these were nothing special.
Yesterday I started putting these back together, as shown in the just-prior post. At that time, I didn’t even know what to call them. But they’re pretty nice, and it would be a shame to see them end up in the dumpster. So why not.
On a whim — now two decades after my first attempt to ID them — I did another Google search.
I have now gotten a certification, from the son of the designer, that this is (or was) what’s left of a pair of Adrian Pearsall Craft Associates chairs.
Adrian Pearsall is now something of a legend in U.S. mid-century-modern furniture design. Properly restored, this pair of chairs would be worth thousands of dollars.
Worse, improperly restoring them is something of a sacrilege. Not for the money lost, but for taking a valued piece of Americana and destroying it.
This is suddenly a different and more complex task. All my woodworking plans go out the window. And now I have to figure out how to proceed, now that I know what they are. I don’t collect antique furniture, so it’s not clear these have any business staying with me.
I guess the real take-away is that these never should have ended up in the trash. But they did so, because the prior owner left it up to her kids. I only discovered the chairs’ secret identity because they became part of my own Swedish death cleaning. I still have no idea what to do with them, but at least I’m making the decision, with an understanding of what they are.
