Turkish chair provides history lesson

UpholsteryJournalMag.com | December 7, 2011

By Janet Cass

This c.1850 “Turkish” or “Turkey” chair illustrates seating design introduced during the Victorian age (1837–1901). Such chairs weren’t necessarily produced in Turkey, but reflected the West’s fascination with artifacts it perceived as characteristic of exotic lands.

With hallmark flared arms, voluptuous stuffing, and often sporting a fringed base, this style incorporates the era’s newly available coil spring, invented between 1830 and 1837 by Samuel Pratt. In Turkish chairs, these springs were typically used in seats, backs, arms and even behind base fringe, where they provided a rocking sensation.

Also typical of mid-Victorian seating construction is this piece’s frame of lathe and iron rod, the latter’s increasing availability during this period a byproduct of Britain’s Industrial Age (1815–1848). Metal rod offered a strength-to-weight ratio ideal for a framing component, producing a frame with greater strength and flexibility than timber frames. The only wood in this example is its base, which meant that upholsterer John V. Marino of Harper House Furniture in Venice, Fla., had to hand-tie each spring to the iron frame during the chair’s reconstruction. “It was like making it from scratch,” he recalls of the more than 80-hour project.

Marino applied the customer’s own leather over cow-hair stuffing from Burch Fabrics Group, Grand Rapids, Mich., preferring this padding to horse hair as he feels that the former provides springier seating. When it came to tufting, Marino played detective in order to determine the original position of the buttons, revealed once he reached the original face fabric after digging through the many layers of material that had been applied over the chair’s 150-year life.

The biggest challenge, though, was Marino’s desire to “splice the arms into the back so the leather looks like one piece.” This was achieved by careful positioning of seams, made possible by Marino’s expertise gleaned from more than 50 years in the trade. His experience also allowed him to closely space leather pleats without creating a bulky mass.

The first step in fabricating the pleated border, visible on the bottom front of the chair, was to make a row of machine stitching along the length of what would eventually be the top of the border. Next, a welt was machine-sewn along the same length. The welt was then hand-sewn to the chair with half-inch-long stitches. Marino used a diamond-point curved needle for this step, as he feels that the triangular shape of its tip pierces leather better than a standard, round-tipped needle.

Comments

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• 

  charlie pentogenis

  Feb 1, 2012
  5:38 pm CST

  superb work

  as a traditional upholsterer myself i understand the time and effort involved. first class work, well done.

• 

  Gary Stanley

  Dec 9, 2011
  10:08 pm CST

  GREAT JOB

  (No text.)