Seatmore Table and Chairs

A little while back I had a client come in that brought me these chairs and table. I think at one time these were manufactured to go in all sorts of soda shops around the country. Apparently these are attributed to FRANK RIEDER & SONS, PHILADEPHIA, PA.  I have had great success at restoring latex covered pieces in the past and they are difficult to say the very least. This one was no exception to the rule. I also had some pretty extensive glue ups and repairs to do to them after I removed all of the latex as well as repairs to the joinery on the table. I also had to re-make several pieces and luckily I had some of the long leaf pine just laying about the shop. (there were chairs her from two different sets, long leaf pine and quarter sawn oak. I don't know why anyone would ever cover these up...)Here is what the set looked like when it came in....

And here,  I will just include some detailed pictures with brief descriptions of all of the repairs...

Table, Pre-Stripping..Repair leg to Apron and Tongue and Groove on Top 









Single Chair. Dis-assembly for Repair








Top Rail Pre-Repair












Top Rail Removed for Repair









Chair Rung Replacement Comparison










One Rung Replaced (Bridle Joint)








All Rungs and Dowels in Place








Second Chair Rung Replacement












Glue Up 





As you can see, there were some pretty extensive repairs and most of the joints had to be re-glued and lots of them re-made. It took a while before I could even get to the sanding and finishing part, which was in itself pretty intensive. 


In the process, there are many things that you need to avoid stripping/sanding and so, unlike what many people think, it's not just dipping it (which I never do) or sanding off the finish (a total no-no in my book, ever) and just painting on some stripper. In this process, I ALWAYS like to save any label or marking that is original to the piece if at all possible and I have many different methods of doing this. In this search for better ways to preserve them, and preserving the furniture in general, I have taken it upon myself to do more research, usually just out of curiosity, on the pieces and origins of the furniture...I have decided, since I take so many pictures in the first place (not always, but usually), to offer this as sort of an extra service to those that want it. I like to inform people about their furniture if I can. I have decided to offer a sort of pictoral history of the repairs and whenever possible historical data or links about the origins of the furniture in question. That being said, I sort of offered that up on these and was able to save what was left of the labels on them. Here are a couple of pics and a couple of pics of the finished pieces. 














Stained and Oiled







Stained and Oiled


(the one oddball quarter sawn oak chair. Not an original part of this set, but I thought it was really great nonetheless.)







Finished Table Top (w/o Marble Top)





I see on the label the patent date says 1920,then there is another date beside that, says 1924. I don't know if that is a second patent date, or a manufacture date. I would guess that they are early 20's though, judging by my research, very possibly the 1924 date is the manufacture date. I thought they were very interesting though. Not my typical mid-century style restoration, but I do a lot of older stuff as well and thought this one was a pretty nice set and worthy of a mention.  Hope you did too. 

Furniture from afar

Well, I haven't had much time to blog lately. Been overwhelmed a bit by life in general and having two beautiful girls to help take care of. Your priorities change a bit. I wanted to add this to my story line though...
I have had furniture/clients come to me from all over Texas, Oklahoma and have regular clients in Austin, Waco especially. These people came to me all the way from Wellington Texas, which is in the Texas Panhandle (very close to Amarillo, where I spent some time as a kid)...I was really happy that they felt it was worth coming all that way to have me restore their newly inherited furniture. They were very nice people and super easy to deal with. I sent them pics along the way of the restoration process and tried to keep them well informed on the whole process.
There was literally a whole truckload (17' truck) of furniture when it was all said and done.
Two Gibbings love seats, one long Gibbings couch, a large and a small Gibbings coffee table, a china cabinet with a hutch, a dining table and a rocking chair in need of a refinishing and arm repair...When it was done, they couldn't have been more happier with the finished pieces. We helped them pack up and sent them back on their way home, hoping that everything made it safely. Well, soon after they got home. Katy sent me this picture and a nice note.

And here are a few pictures of the furniture in the works....

Small Gibbings Coffee Table Before Restoration

Gibbings Coffee Table Before restoration

Gibbings Love Seat Stretcher Repair

Two Gibbings Love Seats ready for the booth

Sanding and Prepping the large Gibbings Couch

Two Gibbings Tables in the Booth, one stained, ready to be finished

Dining Table with Lazy Susan Completed

Hutch Completed

China Cabinet with Hutch Competed

Gibbings Walnut Coffee Table Completed

It's dealings like this that make it all worth it. It's also nice to know that this stuff goes to a good home. What a pleasure. Thanks Charlie and Katy.

Paul Evans Cityscape Coffee Table

Finished Piece

This is a Paul Evans Cityscape coffee table I received from a client in the Fort Worth area who was planning to take it to show it in the 48th annual Dolly Johnson Antique & Art Show. It was also to be featured in 360 West magazine, which I thought was pretty neat.
This was when I had first moved into my new shop here by the levy..The piece was in really rough shape. I've done several of these Paul Evans pieces and have had great success with them. I really like the olive burl veneer and some of their designs are really great, even though some are a little over the top, it's got a certain deco quality about it as well as having the sleekness of a modern design.

One thing I love especially about this, is not necessarily even the design, but the philosophy behind the design and production of it, which is exactly the type of thing we are going to be trying to do here in the very near future (it is called Hand Crafted Modern, for those of you interested and we will be making prototypes and refining designs for a few lines of furniture this fall).... Their philosophy is basically the same as ours...Every piece should have the same amount of lovingly designed and hand crafted and finished care as the last one or the one after it. This way, you have nothing but truly one of a kind pieces of custom furniture even if they are from the same basic design, each one is different and cared for throughout the whole creative process.
(from Wikipedia) The artist's relationship with Directional Furniture set a unique standard for creative manufacture by insisting every piece is made by hand, finished by hand, supervised by the artist at each step of production, one piece at a time.

I had been told it needed some pieces of veneer glued up, so I thought, o.k. , no problem, nothing I can't handle...Well, if you look at this piece closer (which is a series of boxes, connected to one another) , you begin to realize, that a few pieces of veneer turns into several dozen.

First glue/clamp ups

Alternate View

More Clamps Being Added

Another Alternate View


Clampscape

This set of boxes is veneered on every side by dozens of pieces of olive burl veneer and chrome plated steel. Most of the chrome was in decent shape, just needed a bit of polishing , but the olive burl veneer was peeling, splitting and torn from all sides. There were also a couple of dozen pieces of veneer missing that had to be measured , re-cut and re-applied (after the surface was scraped clean at the substrate). Towards the end of the glue ups, I started to realize that it was absolutely necessary to remove the piece of chrome on the end box hiding the first set of screws that held the last box to the one next to it, which would in turn reveal the next when it was removed. This way I would be able to glue up and clamp pieces that I couldn't otherwise get to and get an even finish all the way around, when I actually got to that point.
This one was definitely a challenge. I found the veneer I needed and it was a perfect match, once I applied to proper toner to it during the finishing process. I first carefully removed all of the failing veneer, scraped and cleaned the surface it was to be applied to (also marking every piece of veneer so as to know where it went back to) and re-applied and glued up everything I was able to get to before disassembling the boxes....

Once this was done, I marked, measured, cut and dry fit all of the veneer pieces that were actually missing and applied them as well. At this point I took apart the boxes and repeated the process with the other pieces I wasn't able to get to at first (in hindsight, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to disassemble the boxes first, but I was trying to avoid it for several reasons)... That all said and done ( which took several dozen hours) I was ready to begin the preparation for finishing....
We taped off all of the chrome, stripped it box by box and then let it dry, checked the tape and re-taped for sanding, got everything finish sanded, removed the tape and taped again for finishing....

FINALLY!! I was able to move it into the paint booth. I applied the toner I had mixed to match what would be the original aged patina of the olive burl and then applied the rest of the finish. I then re-assembled the boxes, did one last glue up as well as gluing back the piece of chrome I had removed ( the boxes had already been consecutively numbered on the bottom so I didn't actually have to re-mark them so they went back in the correct order) and cleaned it up as well somewhere there polishing the chrome. Unfortunately, my name didn't get mentioned in the article for the restoration, but here is the final piece and the article it was in. Pretty happy it made it in there, nonetheless.

360 Article

Pull up a Chair

I've said it many times before to different clients that a chair is not always a chair in the sense that you know what to expect in the refinishing/repair of it (the same could be said for a table or credenza).

There seems to be a very common misconception that just because it is a chair (maybe because it is small), it should be less work than a table or any other various larger pipeces of furniture. This couldn't be further from the truth.

They are generally a little more time consuming and difficult to properly design and build, and build to last. The same often times holds true with the restoration and refinishing process of these beasts of burden. These are very delicate items, that over time, with all of the stress and strain we tend to put on them, are truly tested to thier limits. Many times when they come to me for a 'little tlc' or a 'touch up', many times unbeknownst to the client, they are in need of much more. After many years of experiencing this, you know more what to look for, but it has taken many years to get to the point where I recognize the tell tale signs. They are obvious to me now, but to many they are not. This is just an example of such a case. Just had a really good oppurtunity to shoot this one step by step, so I took full advantage of it.

This is one of those chairs (from the 60's I would hazard to guess) that is made of a sturdy white oak (good material by the way) and made to resemble walnut in color.
This could, in my opinion, sit along side any other high end modern designer chair and be quite comfortable with itself once the restoration is complete.

It came in originally just needing a tune up (there were a couple of obviously loose dowels, but the whole chair seemed a bit shakey), but I felt like the finish was pretty worn and gunked up over the years of use it had, not to mention some heavy scratches, so we collectively decided to refinish.

I will normally try to match what would be the natural aged patina of the original finish without all of the gunkiness and build up so you can actually see the woodgrain (in certain cases it is masked only because it is the nature of the original finish). I do this by using and mixing my own stains and toners again with many years of trial and error to perfect this process. (sometimes using a toner rather than a stain so as not to go too dark or too deep).
So..........after a stripping and a good sanding, it became more apparent that the dowel joints on this piece were very loose and in several more places than we'd originally thought (Again, this is not uncommon for a chair of this age) so I began loosening all of the joints to completely separate them so as to get the glue in all the right places, otherwise you are wasting your time and efforts. This also is a very delicate process. You don't want to break the joints, just separate, clean and re-glue/clamp them, also taking note here not to get glue on any of the surrounding surfaces (taping) as this can block out any finish/stain you try and apply later making it appear blotchy at best.
I have included many pictures here to show the clamping/glueing process. We also discovered that there was some ply separation at the arm, so I fixed that as well (thanks to the handy glue syringes I keep around). After all of this we were finally able to complete the sanding, apply the toner, tighten up all of the screws and add the new walnut buttons to cover the screw holes and finish with a nice satin clear coat and a final coat of carnuba wax.
This probably sounds very difficult and was too detailed/verbose. The truth of the matter thgou, is this is still the simplified version.

I hope you enjoyed the snapshot of this restoration. Hopefully it will help more in the understanding and appreciation of chairs in all of thier many forms.

dowel joints for back outer rails

inner dowel joints for front to back rails (see arrows)

dowel joints for rails from front to back under arms (arrows)

dowel joints for front rail left to right

ply seperation on arm of underside of chair damage/repair/clamp (with and without flash)

Toner applied after final sanding (with and without flash)

new buttons applied after screws tightened with grain aligned
(several angles with and without flash)

top angle with toner applied (so you can see arms)

several angles with finish applied

wax applied

And finally the chair put back together