(This is a long post so you might
want to top up your wine glass before continuing. Ed.)
A few weeks ago while exploring a local flea market recommended by sister K, I came across a pile of burlap grain sacks from the
early 1940s. They had some interesting markings on them and apparently had been made in Belgium; the exact provenance
was written on a little card next to the display but I have since forgotten what it was. For $24 a bag, however, I thought the material had
some repurposing potential so I bought one with a vague idea of what I would do
with it. As often happens, this vague idea eventually took on a life of its own (sometimes I just sit back and watch it happen) and I knew what I would do with the sack. An ancient ottoman sitting in our store room for several years would be the perfect vehicle for repurposing my unusual find.
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| I was about to transform this pig's ear into a lovely |
The origins
of the ottoman are somewhat interesting, if slightly vague. I remember it residing in my grandmother's
house and that it matched a rather uncomfortable club chair with the same fabric. Somewhere in the intervening 50 years or so the chair went missing but amazingly the ottoman had survived, probably because I thought it had "potential" when I rescued it from our parent's attic. I have a lot of things like that lurking in my house and store room, just waiting for the moment when I realize what it is I am supposed to do with it; sort of a "Design Epiphany". After some digging I found it stashed on a back shelf and something about it
jogged my memory. It had been years since I had actually seen it and suddenly I had a flashback to Mr. Easter...
Mr. Easter,
or simply Mistereaster, lived in the same tiny central-Texas town where my late
mother grew up. He was the official Town Upholsterer and had a booming business,
needless to say, since it was him or no one. Just like summoning the Village Blacksmith if your horse threw
a shoe or the Town Crier if the marauders where coming to steal your children,
you called Mistereaster if you had a furniture problem. My grandmother was
always calling him to swing by and collect a chair or sofa from one of her
furnished rent houses and was by far one of his best customers. Giving him something to reupholster was
one thing; having it returned or even finding it, was another.
Mistereaster
was pretty good at upholstery but really awful at keeping track of his
customer's property and, I suspect, possessed hoarding tendencies that went
undiagnosed. It never failed that we would drive up to his shop looking for something,
only to be told that "it isn't quite ready yet". It wasn't quite ready
because no one could quite find it and hadn't seen it in weeks, months or
sometimes years. Like the Katzenjammer's closet, every time he opened the huge
doors to the storage room something would fall out, and not in a good way. A
wall of furniture would threaten anyone standing within 10 feet of the opening
and the kids were always told to "stay in the car!". Sometimes the
piece was found, but sometimes not for weeks and a few times was never located at
all. Things just simply got sucked up into the swirling vortex of
Mistereaster's store room and then spewed out into a parallel universe. Or as
my mother used to say, "It has entered The System", never to be seen
again.
For some
reason this didn't seem to stop anyone from continuing to call on Mistereaster
for his upholstery services and the mismanagement and frustration continued on,
literally, for decades. Eventually Mistereaster passed away and his son,
Mistereasterjunior, inherited the business. Finally, missing furniture would be
reunited with its owner (if they were even still alive)! Unfortunately,
Mistereasterjunior had inherited his father's penchant for losing things and
the vicious cycle simply continued. Occasionally, sometimes years later, my
grandmother would receive a call saying her slip covers or somesuch were ready
but by then they had been long-forgotten as was the chair itself. The last time
I remember driving out to look for something MIA, a huge sofa came flying out
of the barn and we ran for our lives, never to return.
This brings
me back to the ottoman. While rather small and rickety it seemed to have
potential and so I decided to channel Mistereaster and give it a go. That's when
I discovered one of his secret upholstery tricks that probably went to the
grave with him...
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| Somewhere in here is buried the news-of-the-day, circa 1934. |
As I cut
away the rotten fabric from the top of the ottoman I discovered shredded, yet neatly compressed, yellowed newspaper from the 1930s. No doubt this method was much cheaper than using
batting exclusively during the Great Depression and my guess is Mistereaster had been doing this for years. I
also discovered the origins of the frame itself, which was actually an old
crate used to ship medical supplies from a company called G.K. Harvey Company, also circa 1930. It turned out I was in possession of a piece of history cobbled together from materials
readily and cheaply available during tough economic times and repurposed by
Mistereaster. Now, many years later I was doing the exact same thing: spending just a few dollars to restore my grandmother's ottoman using a seventy year-old grain sack found at a flea market.
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| I loved this grain sack at first sight. You know how some things just speak to you? |
On second thought, maybe the chair is still sitting in his store room...
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| I hope Mistereaster would be proud of the finished piece. At least it hasn't disappeared into "The System". At least not yet.
Chairs,
Gigi
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