When I was at Kempton, I had my eye out for a duet or piano stool to use as a wedding gift for a friend getting married this summer. I was really pleased with the one I found as the upholstery was minimal but the stool was in really good condition.
Remember at school, when you were carrying out some innocuous activity or another, and your teacher made you wear those awful plastic safety googles that were horribly uncool, blurred your vision and made it harder to finish you task? If you were lucky you got safety glasses that were slightly less awful. You only wore them when the teacher was looking and pushed them up on top of your head the rest of the time.
Once I had finished the armchair, I was once again in search of a new project. This time I really wanted to do something for myself, either to keep or sell on. I had been systematically trawling the local house clearance and charity shops but nothing had caught my eye.
Somewhere between finishing Laura’s maternity chair and starting on Nanny’s armchair, I started to think about doing paid reupholstery commissions. I mentioned this to a few people and was offered an old stuffover chair to have a go at. I call it the doll’s house chair because of its interesting back story. It was designed and built by William Lendon Prosser. He worked for Maples in London and was asked to make some chairs for Queen Mary’s Doll’s House. I had a look at the website and found some chairs in the king’s bedroom that look very similar.
When I started upholstery, I didn’t think I would be doing this for very long so I kept purchases to a minimum. Because I learn at a college, I could get away with having no tools at all and borrow everything during my lessons. However this is definitely not an option as I am horribly competitive with myself and need the resources to carry on my projects at home.