take a seat.

This chair was passed onto me by family and I’ve been waiting for Oma and Opa’s visit to get it mended. Opa trained as an upholsterer in his youth. It was simply a question of finding the perfect fabric.

I had a vague idea I’d seen the perfect fabric but checking in the most likely places it didn’t turn up. And I just couldn’t bring myself to buy anything else. Then one night, in the middle of the night, it struck me. Ink & Sprindle. It was a design I’d seen while browsing their website after twittering with Teegan. And here it is!

Luckily the Dutchman agrees! We’re off to their studio today to purchase our fabric and search out the other bits and pieces Opa needs to finish the job. Its very exciting!

While browsing Ink and Spindle‘s website we also spotted this fabric which is perfect for a pair of chairs I found on the footpath last year.

Originally I had planned to just go with the sixties vinyl thing for these and replace the existing upholstery with something similar. Of course that would have been too easy!

Now that I’ve seen the Rooftops design they can’t possibly be anything else. I’ve always thought these chairs are a nice little size for the Flipster’s room, not actually kid’s chairs (which he has grown out of) but small enough to be comfortable for six year olds and their skinny asses. This design is great as it is something I like but that will pass the friends-test for the Flipster. The inner-urban living and bicycles also rings our bells. (so to speak…. )

The next challenge with these chairs is that only one of them actually has a seat and I need to find someone who can use the existing seat as a template to cut two new ones.

The challenge is that the seat is slightly bowed or saucer-shaped. I’m pretty sure there must be some little factory in Brunswick or Coburg that can still do this, maybe Richmond? Its just a question of finding it before Opa goes back to the Netherlands taking his handy upholstery skills with him! If you have any ideas then please leave a comment or email me. I have removed the seat from the chair and will be trolling the backstreets of the inner-north with it for days!

Another nice feature of these two little chairs is the piece of paper that was glued to the bottom of the seat. It detailed where the chairs had been made, in Richmond, but in contrast to the usual Australian Made it proudly boasts All European Labour.