Farewell to Wales

 After 18 years in Llangadog I decided to move to Sussex and seem to have quickly settled in Hastings with a new workshop at The Yard on Waterworks Rd.

I'm going to miss Wales but it was time for a change. Many thanks to all my customers over the years and here's to new beginnings.

Guerrilla REupholstery - Hayshovel Chair collaboration with Eleanor Pritchard

 "Hayshovel Chair 2024"

Some time back I asked Designer/Weaver Eleanor Pritchard if she'd like to collaborate on a project with me and was delighted when she agreed. I've been usuing her fabrics for many years and over time we have established a good working relationship and friendship so I knew I could trust to her to come up with something interesting for me to work with. 

I found a chair on the street in Swansea and sent her a picture, asking her to come up with an idea to transform it.

She sent me this picture of a shovel she had seen at Compton Verney...

...and this picture of a hay cart she had come across walking in Suffolk.

Err... I had no idea what to make of this but having said this was a chance to "maybe do something very different to what you usually do" I thought I'd better keep quiet and see what happened next.

She then sent me these pictures of a maquette she had made in cardboard, saying "thinking of this as a wooden sided cart full of hay" and it all became clear.

Not a million miles away from this is it?

She also asked me if we could finish the wood with a chiseled effect to age it and "make the arms and legs a bit twiggy."

So I got the chisels and spoke-shave out and started work.

 I added leg extensions as the chair was very low, we agreed that these should remain visible and both liked that the they looked "almost like hooves."

 Next I replaced the wings which were chipboard and water-blown having been left in the street. Here I referred back to the wooden shovel and made some boxy shapes from hardwood from a wardrobe I had taken off the street some years before. This made the chair back-heavy so I had to reduce the front legs to stop it tipping.

 

This whole process is what I love most about the Guerrilla REupholstery idea - I'm an upholsterer, I have no training in furniture making and unlike Eleanor who I like to refer to as International Design Superstar, I have no real experience in design. I don't draw anything because that process doesn't mean anything to me. I take the Design Through Making approach where I just start something, see how it turns out and adapt when it doesn't work. It's good fun, you should try it.

Anyway I stained the woodwork in a mix of Jacobean Walnut and Ebony - we agreed we should go very dark with the wood in contrast to the multitude of blonde wood furniture that has been fashionable for a bit too long now - and could now start the upholstery process.

Here's the frame with a webbed seat covered in offcuts of blue foam and Ultraflex (recycled polyester). We decided that we would use products that meet fire regs (don't get me started on that) but in keeping with the Guerrilla REupholstery ethos were either sustainable or waste products. 

 The fabric is Eleanor's own Chillerton design. Initially Eleanor was thinking of using corduroy or something else with more texture but when we got to this stage it was clear that the ideal fabric to represent the hay (or straw) was from her own range. I used lots of my favourite 'hand-stitched to a piped edge' upholstery method to finish the back and wings because we had to somehow finish the back in wood to replicate the shovel. After much head scratching and consultation with local cabinet maker Jonathan Garrard I managed to wrestle a piece of 6mm ply on to the back by somehow bending it in two opposing directions and very rapidly screwing it in place.

Et Voila

Many thanks to Eleanor for the brilliantly abstract ideas, without which this would have been a very ordinary chair and thanks to Viv Collis for the final photos.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed making the chair, and hey, why not commision a Guerrilla Reupholstery project of your very own?

Guerrilla REupholstery - Acid Moss Chair

 

 

"Acid Moss Chair 2023." 

Another Guerrilla REupholstery collaboration with artist Julie Ann Sheridan

 We made this for our friend Eddie who gave so much help to our daughter for her Spanish A Level (now doing a Spanish degree like) cheers Eddie and thanks for saying "do whatever you want" with the chair because there's no way any normal commission is going to end up like this, let's face it.

Chair found on street in Carmarthen. 

 

Julie's first drawing based on a foliose lichen idea and some soft sculpture legs similar to some others she had recently made. As the chair progressed I realised adding a pattern to the legs would be too much.

But I didn't want to just cover the arms and legs, I wanted an organic, lumpy, bumpy finish - an antidote to the reupholstery work I do every day.

So I just stuffed bits of waste Dacron into the gaps in a random way and finished with lots of hand sewing.

Further Guerrilla REupholstery collaborations in the pipeline for next year - watch this space. Or commission one yourself whydontcha?

Guerrilla Reupholstery - Orange Peel Fungus Chair

 

 Orange Peel Fungus Chair - collaboration with artist Julie Ann Sheridan.

 

 

This was a Guerrilla Reupholstery project made from the bones of this chair that we took from the streets of Bristol

and turned it into this:

Here's the story behind it.

I was inspired by the Instagram account of Bristol-based upholsterer Sadie Campbell who photographs discarded furniture on the streets of Bristol (check out @sadiedidi). There seems to be so much of it that I thought I have to do something about it. So I asked her to locate an armchair that I could pick up when I was driving back to Wales via Bristol. She very kindly found the one above in Easton. Here it is in the back of the van.

 

I took it back to the workshop and this is what we had to work with.

 

Clearly it had been out in the street for months but I set myself the task of turning it into an armchair that was unconventional and striking to look at but also comfortable and durable as furniture has to be. I added the restriction of using only the component parts of this armchair along with waste products from my reupholstery business like foam and wadding offcuts and also scrap wood from the workshop woodpile. So apart from the fabric everything would be made from things that would otherwise go to landfill.

I wanted to make the point that to an upholsterer, flytipped furniture is not necessarily the junk that everyone else thinks it is. This is because unlike almost everyone else, the upholsterer has the tools and facilities to completely transform a piece of furniture, that is, not only to reupholster it but to completely redesign it. 

So I started to strip the chair to see what I had to work with. Well I say 'I' but as always I asked my excellent assistant Jacob to strip it for me. And frankly I'm glad I did because I don't think I could have stomached it. (It's important to stress that he did get paid for this). Here's what we found.

Manky rotten canvas and rusty serpentine springs.

 

A rotten frame infested with slugs.

And the biggest woodlouse in the history of the universe.

So when Jacob had dealt with the horror, got rid of the insects, rotten wood and canvas, disinfected everything and been through counselling, this is what we had left to work with.

 

 And on closer inspection the base just seemed too far gone so in the end we were only left with this much wood.

And this much foam and stuffing.

 

How on earth could I make a chair out of this? To be honest it felt like the chair we picked was just too far gone. Most furniture isn't left on the street as long as this so would be in much better condition but I couldn't let the work we'd already done come to nothing and if I could make something good out of this crap it would further prove my point. But I realised I'd need some help with the design process - enter artist Julie Ann Sheridan, who as luck would have it, also happens to be my wife.

Julie is an abstract painter who often works with lichen, fungus and other organic forms, making paintings like this:

 

 

So I asked her to come up with some loose designs for a chair based on irregular organic forms that might serve as inspiration. Here's what she came up with

 

 

 From this we settled on the Orange Peel Fungus.

Ok then.

 

So I started fixing up the frame by turning it upside down so the wings were now the arms and the arms the back supports. The arm scrolls came in handy for back rail supports and I started adding bits of hardwood from the waste wood pile. This seemed to give something of the shape we were after.

Next I made a set of legs, again from scrap wood.

 

I attached the legs, webbed the back with jute webbing and finished the seat with serpentine springs salvaged from another chair (the ones in the street chair were too rusty). Then I angled the top rail for an irregular shape.

Then I started with the foam. I used everything from the street chair and filled in any gaps with offcut strips from the waste foam pile in the workshop.

This is the last photo I have of the foam stage but in fact I added quite a bit more round the sides and back to give a more rounded shape.

So now I just had to cover it. 

As the chair had to be made only from re-used or sustainable products we chose wool. We went for my favourite tweed from Bute Fabrics in this fabulous orange colour.

And finally with a bit more jiggery-pokery, a few buttons, a fair bit of hand stitching and some irregular pleating here's the final product.

 

 

I hope you think it was worth the effort. And even if you don't I hope you understand the point I'm trying to make:

 

 

UPHOLSTERERS CAN TRANSFORM FLYTIPPED FURNITURE AND SAVE IT FROM LANDFILL.

 

So I'm starting a Guerrilla Reupholstery service where I hope to work with other designers, architects, artists or directly with customers who want to make bespoke sustainable furniture from flytipped junk. It doesn't have to be unusual like this chair, we can make ordinary chairs too, in fact pretty much anything you want.

Get in touch.

Reupholstery Projects

 I haven't updated this blog with many reupholstery projects recently so here's a few pics of what we've been up to.