On Mending A Chair

dwell

Oct 25

A quiet afternoon, a podcast, needle and thread, and an old chair. Mending, is what it was. Taking what’s been loved on, lived in, slept on, and worn through and giving it an extra mile or two. Respecting the life that’s still left in the piece, preferring its character and craftsmanship, letting it fill a deeper note of age in the room.

This one came to us several years ago by way of a thrift shop, its last stop before the landfill. I fell hard for the button tufting (not a bit bothered by two gone missing), the rolled arms, the brass nailhead trim and casters, the correct proportion. No matter that it was torn through even then in a place or two; a knowing soul had already put in its first mending stitches. (Maybe that’s what really won me over?)

It has moved as we have. First off being in the corner of the boys’ bedroom back then, a just-right comfy seat from where I would read them to sleep in the evenings and read them awake in the mornings (a favorite memory is seeing rumple-haired, sleepy-eyed boys peeking out from their triple-stacked bunkbeds as daylight turned to dark). In this house it sits here, in the middle of living and life, in triad conversation around the oval rug with the sofa and rocker, its true burnt orange giving a needed bolt of color in this otherwise quietly colored room.

For all it’s visual appeal that got me in the first place, it’s also comfy. Friends tell friends about this chair. They come over just to sip tea and sit in this chair, long hours of conversation coming easy and slow. It’s the sort of chair that has no pedigree, no pretension, no agenda. It’s simply wholesome and welcoming, comfortable and good. Like a thoughtful host, it has a quiet way of making everyone in the room relax. Which is probably why Nellie, as soon as she was big enough, stretched her puppy body, climbed into it, and claimed it as her own.

And so it is. Nellie’s chair. (Good of her to share it with us, sometimes.) Loved on, lived in, slept on, and worn through. Shredded might be the right word in recent months, with stuffing threatening escape. Certainly a situation that could no longer be ignored. Finally, it was time. I cut a fresh length of burlap, tucked it between buttons and over peeking stuffing, pulled a length of thread through the eye of a needle, and started stitching.

This old chair?

It could have been replaced.

It could have been reupholstered.

It could also be mended.