History hidden in chair seats

kw: historical investigations, upholstery, side chairs, photo essays

When my wife and I were married we bought a set of four side chairs and a small dining table at a thrift store. After we bought a house we bought another set of five chairs, four side chairs and one with arms, and a better table (still at a thrift store); we gave the old table away. Soon after that a relative sent us an antique table with its own set of five matching lyreback chairs, one of them having arms. We gave away the thrift store table, and now we could have big dinners!

The original four chairs had some kind of whitish plastic on the seats, and both sets of the others had patterned fabric seats. All were looking quite worn. We bought several yards of a darkish teal-colored upholstery fabric and I reupholstered all of them. I left the plastic on the original set—I just covered it—but I stripped and replaced the fabrics from the other ten chairs. For those ten I also added a half inch more padding of "fiberfill" to match the thicker padding on the first four.

About thirty years later the teal fabric had done its duty and it was getting tattered, so we bought a patterned blue-and-tan fabric, getting enough so I could center the pattern on each seat, as this photo shows. However, this is a less durable fabric, and fifteen years of use left the chairs in the condition shown here.

We decided to reupholster them again, a third time. We had long since moved all the lyreback chairs to bedrooms where they'd get less use because the backs are fragile, so their seats are in good condition. We decided to redo only eight of the nine original chairs, leaving the chair with arms alone. The new fabric will be seen later on. We also decided to add a couple of inches of foam. As we've aged, the chairs have begun feeling a little too stiff for us.

You can see above that one set of chairs—the first set we bought—is oak with a walnut stain, and the other is of a lighter-colored wood, probably maple. The lyreback chairs are cherry with a walnut stain.

Turning the chairs over we can see the makers' marks. The oak chairs were made by Richardson, but which of the many companies by that name, I don't know. At least three companies by that name, in different states, use an "R" logo similar to the capital "R" in this mark. One of the companies, in Arizona, was founded in 1972, while these chairs were decades old when I bought them in 1976, so we can rule that company out.

Morris Furniture Manufacturing Co. of Los Angeles is less of a mystery. This is not the Phyllis Morris company, which seems to have specialized in fancy, ornate beds for celebrities, founded in 1952, but a different company that was founded in 1936, so there is plenty of room for the maple chairs to be from the 1960's or earlier, perhaps much earlier.

As I mentioned, the oak chairs still had the plastic covers under the upholstery I'd used before. This time I decided to remove it to see what was underneath. It was this action that triggered the historical adventure.

When I removed the plastic and cleaned it, I found it is Naugahyde, and that it was not the original seat cover. It was held on with tiny tacks, ¼" long (7mm). Underneath I found staples from an earlier event, apparently the original cover attachment, which had bits of greenish, patterned plastic remaining as though whoever put on the Naugahyde just ripped the plastic off and nailed over it.

This is the collection of little tacks I removed from the four oak chairs. There is one larger tack, that had apparently been used to hold a corner where several layers needed to be held. I found only the one.

The picture below shows what I found under the Naugahyde.

The staples left behind frequently held a small bit of greenish-gray plastic. Two of the chairs also had the torn edge of the label; you know, the one that says, "Not to be removed under penalty of law." The bits of remaining text indicate that the chairs were made after 1929, but not how much later. They are probably from the 1940's or even a little later.

After I took the Naugahyde from the first chair, my wife and I discussed what to do. We decided to replace the Naugahyde as a foundation for the added padding.

Before going on I'll show what the older staples looked like, compared to the ones I used for this work.

The old staples are quite robust. You can see from the dents in the wood nearby that they were inserted with a lot of force, so I infer that a powered staple gun was used. Such tools were invented in the early 1950's, so that puts an age limit on the oak chairs.

The scattering of holes along the edge were made by the little tacks, which were clearly put in by hand. Someone with good aim can use a magnetized tack hammer to hold the tack and drive it in, right next to the thumb holding the fabric! Missing is even more painful than simply hitting the thumb with a hammer.

The way the Naugahyde was cut in an in-and-out way near the tacks indicates that it was first pulled taut, then the tacks were put in, after which it was cut closer to the tacks. That reduced the need for such excellent aim.

Once we decided to keep the Naugahyde in place, I put it back on the first chair with staples.

My initial process for the oak chairs was this: 

1. Remove the blue-and-tan fabric.
2. Remove the tacks holding the Naugahyde, along one edge.
3. Staple that edge back into place.
4. Continue with all edges. These chairs have a curved back to the seat, so they had to be attached a little at a time along the curve.
5. Use a felt tip marker to indicate where the screws go (illustration later).

To get the maple chairs to this point, I just had to remove the blue-and-tan fabric. To explain what I had to do to measure the new fabric, I need this picture:

The padding we used was cut from a Queen size mattress topper. Each chair was to be padded with two thicknesses. To partially compress it while attaching the fabric, I gathered weights from our various workout spaces to total 40 lbs (18 kg).

At the bottom we see the wrong side of the new fabric, the two thicknesses of "eggcrate" foam, back to back (I used the chair bottom as a template), then the chair bottom, and the weights on top.

To get the fabric the right size I laid out a large piece of newsprint in place of the fabric shown here, drew it up to about two inches inside the edge of the chair bottom, and marked it. I made separate templates, because the two kinds of chair have quite different seat sizes and shapes. The templates were used to cut the fabric, laid out in our spare bedroom, using a drywall square under the cut line to keep the scissors from harming the carpet.

At the point in the process shown above, I cut the curve by eye. I also removed a square of fabric from each corner (two per chair for the oak chairs, and four per chair for the maple chairs later), to reduce bulk in the overlap areas.

Right after I made the photo above, I cut the curve from the lower part of the fabric, and stapled it into place.

Once that was done I measured the hole-to-hole spacing in the chair support, to refine the felt tip marker lines, such as those seen here. In this corner, and in about half the others, repeated removal-and-replacement had resulted in a real mess. I cleaned out the holes. Then I carved bits of wood and glued them in, and used a rotary tool with a sanding wheel to flatten them after the glue dried. I used Elmer's Wood Glue. When each repaired screw location was ready, I marked the location and drilled a 1/8 inch pilot hole.

I should mention a detail about stapling the fabric to the plywood. I had cut enough extra so I could fold about an inch under; thus there is not a cut edge showing. I used 5/16 inch staples rather than 1/4 inch so the extra thickness would not be a liability.

Here is the first of the oak chairs to be reupholstered next to one that is ready to be done.

We like the darker fabric color and denser pattern. It won't show spills nearly as badly as our prior fabrics.

This chair design is also quite a bit more robust than that of the maple chairs. I have not had to knock any of these apart and re-glue the joints, while all of the maple chairs have needed such attention.

Here is the first of the maple chairs to be reupholstered next to one that is ready to be done.

Here you can also see the nice woodwork of the backs. We like these chairs, even though I prefer not to sit in them because I am twice as heavy as my wife and I tend to loosen their joints. You can see a hint of the problem in the crossbars that just show below the seats. This post from 2018 shows one of these getting reglued.

Now that all eight chairs have been redone, we have prettier, more comfortable seating for the dining room, the room we use the most.