The "Dogstool" and chairs needing a new home

The two tier footstool made specially for the elderly dachshund is finished, I hope he likes it.

So now a question, does anyone know anyone who can give these chairs a good home?

There are a matching pair of each and all four were kindly given to us to rehome with someone who is prepared to spend some time to lovingly restore them. The young couple who have asked us to do this are emptying a house and just couldn't bring themselves to throw these lovely old chairs on the tip. They believe passionately in recycling. So......... any takers?

The two medallion backed chairs are mahogany, the frames are fine but as you can see, all of the canework needs to be replaced. The medallion cane is "blind", in other words each individual strand will need to be cut to size and hand woven in place - no mean feat, but these chairs are worth it.

The two little bedroom chairs need a clean, re-glue and the seats re-weaving.

Come on there must be someone out there who wants a really good project, especially for these cold dark nights! Please e-mail me or leave a comment, you will need to collect them from us here in Dorset.

Oooh and P.S. please pop over to Wendy's blog here:  http://www.1stuniquegifts.co.uk/blog/2012/02/handmade-monday-52/ and congratulate her on a whole YEAR of supporting other craftspeople - hip, hip......! Well done Wendy.

Twittering

You may or may not have noticed that a new button has appeared here on the blog, (top left)....yes we've joined the world of Twitter. Now I'm not a great social media fan, (I find Facebook a bit odd) but I have to say that I AM enjoying Twittering. We haven't got loads of people following us, but that doesn't matter - I don't mind being "Billy No Mates" - it's all about quality not quantity!

If you're a twitterer too please feel free to tweet us - @formerglories.

Meanwhile we have finished 28 of the chapel chairs and tomorrow hopefully we'll do just one more because we have a dozen or so cane panels to replace. Looking forward to a bit of a rest at the weekend!

Kids and Crafts

I'm eating lunch, but just had to have a break to share this wonderful site with you. it's here:

http://www.coolitschools.com/start-imagining

Now if you have small children around you, you're going to love the ideas here for recycling throwaway stuff into exciting things for small people to entertain themselves. I love it!!

A weekend with Gio Ponti

Well not quite...but a weekend with chairs designed by Gio Ponti way back in 1957 that are still in production today, see the website here.

These chairs are known as the "superleggera" or "super light" design - and super light is no exaggeration believe me! They are truly amazing, you can lift them with one finger, the ash frame is so slender.... they're a kind of delicate but strong ballerina of the chair world.

My job as ever is to replace the seats, not an easy task, but I thought my fellow chair seat weavers out there might appreciate a photo "anatomy" of the process needed to replace these awkward little blighters! It made me smile when I read on the Cassina web page that the seats are "india cane", well I don't know about India but they're definitely cane! So firstly here's the seat before work started.

 Notice the "knotted" edge around the frame and the rush style covering of the corners, so more investigation needed....

Wow that's neatly done, so where are all of the cane ends?

Ha, neatly tucked into the reed cane liner and then overwrapped by the next cane along. So what about those rush type corners?

Oooh, clever! So having taken it all apart guess what I was doing for the rest of the weekend? Well, it makes a change from rushing chapel chairs!

Nearly famous....!

Well......not quite, but our materials may be near to other people who are famous!

Every now and again we'll have one of those really interesting phone calls, a designer, museum or theatre company wanting to create something a bit different using our materials. In the past we've supplied advice and all sorts of materials to be used by the West End and Covent Garden Theatres, snazzy London restaurants and even on the catwalk. We once supplied some basketmaking cane for a scene in "The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin" TV programme, (the poor long suffering wife of Reggie was trying to save money by restoring some chairs in one episode.)

Well today it was a film company that phoned, but not just any film company, the makers of the new Bond movie. Yes, our materials will be used on the set of the new movie. Oh well I thought it was exciting anyway........ at least it's a kind of brush with fame - about the closest we'll ever get, (thankfully)!

So a word of the week for a change.

Deluded - To mislead the mind or judgment, to mock or frustrate hopes and aims.

Just about sums it up I think!

D'ya know what it is yet?

Haven't had much "spare" time this week, that might be because we've finished eight of the chapel chairs. So this weekend meant catch up time on some long overdue projects. Here are some component parts of the latest thing...any guesses?

Okay here's a clue, all of the pieces glued together.

I feel very guilty admitting it, but we were asked to make this over a year ago. I found all of the component parts eventually and finally got around to forming the extra mortices today, all it needs now is two seat tops. Any closer to guessing yet?

Well it's a dogs step stool! We've made it to order especially for one of our customers elderly Daschunds, (stay with me) the dog is too old to jump up onto the bed now, so the idea is he can use this as a staircase.

The things we do.

A boot sale find

We often wander around the boot sale part of our local market at the weekend but rarely find anything to buy, after all we are trying to clear the house out, not add yet more!!

But this weekend I did find a little something.

 

It's a hand turned shallow dish made from mahogany. I brought it home, cleaned it up and then drilled a series of holes around the lip so that I could use it as a basket base. Using some left over bits of weaving material, this is the result.

A pot holder full of Spring colours. I bought a second bigger platter too, but there wasn't enough time left on Sunday to work on that one because we had the extra sad task of dismantling poor Sybil's outdoor run - it was too painful to see it every day, we found ourselves looking for her inside.....