Stitch Up

Lately I've taken to painting everything white.  White walls, white floors … you get the picture.  No doubt easy to change when I tire of it, but for now I just can't get enough of it. And having achieved uniform whiteness in the bedroom, I had high hopes when it came to taking a few snapshots of my sleeping space.  I mean, how hard could it possibly be to capture said uniform whiteness in photographic form?  HARD, that's how hard.  Anyway, enough of my I-want-to-include-my-own-photography-on-my-blog woes 'cause I wanna talk about my bed.

I've been wandering around with an idea of how I'd like my bed to look ever since spotting these images on Netta-Natalia's old blog Likainen Parketti.  My choice of fabric - a linen duvet cover - was a foolish one.  Both cutting and sewing a straight edge proved nigh on impossible as the fabric continually pulled in opposite directions … but I soldiered on, cursing merrily along the way!  I had hoped the finished result would include a few more of those natural creases synonymous with a lived-in linen look, but achieving a snug fit plus creases just wasn't to be.

it's all about me

Eames LAR, Circa Modern | Artwork, Conrad Jon Godly | Quote via Lotta Agaton | Interior for Elle Decoration - ph. Pia Ulin, stylist Lotta Agaton | Candle, Ontwerpduo

Now I've ditched CHAIRSMITH, I've ditched talking in the first person plural.  And I prefer it this way.  When I first started blogging it was all about the subject matter.  The person behind the words was an irrelevance, and therefore I chose to take a back seat.  Opting to write as if there was more than one person behind CHAIRSMITH also allowed me to be anonymous, to have no identity - and this is something I felt comfortable with at the time.  But a few years down the line things began to get tricky.  At times, I was unable to write the words I wanted to write because sentences become too burdensome to formulate using 'we' or 'us'.  I abandoned tweets I wanted to send or reply to as I'd be unable to make the language work.  But I counterbalanced this with the personal amusement gained from observations and comments other folk continually made about CHAIRSMITH.  Not once was I mistaken for a female.  On the contrary, I lost count of the times I'd receive comments which included the words 'he', him', 'chap/s', 'Mr' and 'guys'.

What? Don't chicks do mid-century modern? They do. I know. But perhaps modern chair design is more synonymous with the male of the species, whereas the fairer sex are typecast as preferring chinz and over-stuffed upholstery.  I don't know, but it's worth dwelling on for a moment.

Moment over.

Two things happened towards towards the end of my career at CHAIRSMITH (and please feel free to laugh at the 'career' reference) which culminated in my name - my actual, real name - being published alongside the name of my former blog.  This was weird.  It looked weird.  It felt weird.  But it turned out to be the moment I'd been waiting for - an opportunity to come clean about the real me.  And now I like being me, and having a name and communicating using words like 'I' and 'me'.  And I quite like having an about page, about me.

Hey, it's all about me!

reality check

Home of Wolfram Neugebauer | Photos by Janne Peters

OK, OK, so second post in and I'm regurgitating pictures of someone else's home … but I couldn't help myself.  I spotted these pictures months ago in Elle Decoration (January 2014) and I've been unable to take my eyes of this Hamburg apartment ever since.  I thought if I blogged about it, it might help dampen the urge I have to decorate my entire house.  Call it therapy.

I can't pinpoint exactly what it is about this place that keeps me coming back for more. Perhaps the abundance of light? Perhaps the designer classics dotted here, there and everywhere? Perhaps the muted colour palette?  Perhaps that vintage trolley?  Yeah, that vintage trolley.

I get a kick out of seeing how other folk put together their homes, seeing what goodies they collect and how they arrange stuff.  And after seeing these photos I could quite happily spend hours dreaming about owning an Egg chair.  Or a Pretzel chair.  Even a small army of Series 7s.  I'd be quite content to while away hours contemplating where I'd position a Barcelona day bed should I ever have one, or where exactly I'd mount a set of Serge Mouille wall lights.  But why dream when I can have my very own 'vintage trolley with back to front books and candlesticks' reality.

You see, tucked away somewhere or other I happen to have my very own vintage trolley.  It was a family cast-off destined for the charity shop, or worst still, the dump.  Being the furniture hoarder that I am - a furniture hoarder with no game plan that is - I took it in.  I had no room for a vintage trolley, no need for a vintage trolley.  In fact, I wasn't even sure if I liked the look of said trolley.  

But now I'm beginning to see that vintage trolley in a whole new light.  And I have plans for it, big plans!

it's a wrap

So this, my final post as CHAIRSMITH.  And there we have it.  Done.  And dusted.

Having started a new blog from scratch - different name, different domain - I have now merged my newer content with the old CHAIRSMITH blog in order to keep everything in one place.  For those of you with a beady eye, the previous post should indeed go after this one, but as I published my maiden post on the new blog before signing off as CHAIRSMITH, there is a slight discrepancy in the order of play.  Too much information?

Probably.

Updated January 2015

the future is leaving

Give a girl a new blog, a blank canvas … and then what?  It would appear the freedom to post about anything and everything comes hand in hand with a minefield of decision-making on what exactly one should write about.  Errrr!  But I'm thinking once I get this first post out of the way, it will be plain sailing (fingers crossed).  

True to form, I haven't strayed too far off the beaten track.  Chairs.  This one is a current favourite.  An Ercol rocking chair, Windsor Quaker to be precise.  Picked up at auction after failing to meet its reserve, this sorry fellow was confined to the 'brown furniture' section at the auction house.  That section which, because of all the unfashionable (read ugly) brown, no-one fears to tread … except perhaps for the up-cycler.

The original dark brown stain (varnish, lacquer, call it what you will) on these chairs is fairly invincible, and I've seen one too many unsuccessful attempts at trying to remove it in order to get to the beautiful blonde wood beneath.  Stripping the chair down and all that goes with is a huge undertaking, and the results rarely look good.  So when considering how to transform this little rocker into something more eye-catching, I opted for what some might consider an easy life.  And no doubt there will be others who liken this kind of make-over to a criminal offence.  

Like. I. Care.  

Grey spray paint to the rescue, and I like it this way.  Plus I like spray paint … it's exciting.  Difficult to master, yes.  And being difficult to master means it makes you swear a lot.  But hey-ho, I also like swearing!  Post make-over this chair now gets sat on, rocked … you know, all the stuff a rocking chair should experience in life.  Stuff it wasn't experiencing, nor likely to experience, while hanging out at the auction house waiting for someone to come up with a winning bid.