A Tale of Two Chairs

Display at the Musee des Arts Decoratif

My friend Roseanne and I met her daughter and a friend in Paris last summer. My favorite place was the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in the Louvre. Roseanne likes medieval. I am looking at modern.

The Museum of Decorative Arts has an impressive display of modern chairs, which you can view from above. I was exclaiming; Roseanne was unimpressed. She said, "I've got a pair of chairs just like those in my basement." I couldn't figure out which one she was talking about, but I figured I'd better confiscate them when we got home.

Now I realize she was pointing to the dark brown chair in the

center here.

She was quite happy about my confiscation of the chairs although they did a good job of holding the laundry. She'd gotten them from her late father-in-law's house years ago. She never liked them.

She even delivered. They are not in perfect shape

but they cleaned up nice.

Here they are with our Christmas donation

quilt for the 2014 Festival of Trees fundraiser.

The City Sewers paper pieced it using the

 Geese in the Forest pattern from Twiddletails.

See the pattern here:

http://www.twiddletails.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=405

The chairs seem to be a form of the"Dax "chair designed by Charles Eames,

manufactured by Herman Miller.

This version is called a "Dax Rope-Edge Chair."

The shell is turquoise fiberglass, the upholstery

white naugahyde.

Sara Chappell's quilt (design by American Jane)  is on the wall here 

in the entrance hall in my new 1970 modern house.

UPDATE: See the CrissCross pattern by clicking and scrolling way down:

http://www.americanjane.com/patterns.php

A restored pair of upholstered Dax chairs

The stickers on the bottom of mine indicate they were from an Air Force

Officers' club (Roseanne's father-in-law was in the Air Force.)

I found one just like them on line. It said the white chairs

were from 1954. The chair in Switzerland still has the Herman Miller stickers. Mine don't.

Here's my favorite thing about Mid-Century Modernism. While I haven't found a Stickley chair gathering dust in any one's basement in a long time, it is indeed possible to find great examples of the modern genre at garage sales and in the cellar. 

This week's garage sale finds:

25 cents each!

They are huge!

People are often glad to see this stuff go. Some folks are just not modern.