Sleeping beauty: Awakening the forgotten vintage piece
I don’t know about you, but I love to find an old piece that has been neglected, forgotten, ill-used, or underappreciated, and to help it become the star it was meant to be. The piece might be a chair, or a desk, or an old lamp. With good care and some vision, that sleeper can greet a new day.
I’m sure I’m anthropomorphizing here, but helping that forgotten piece become its best self is hugely therapeutic for me. And once I discovered the power these transformations have over my own state of mind, I’ve been staying alert for more opportunities to make them happen.
To spot a sleeping beauty, it helps to pay attention. To notice the thing gathering dust in the cobwebbed corner in the first place, and then to see it for what it is and can be. Its lines and fundamental elegance, or its funkiness, its playfulness, its uniqueness, or some other quality it owns, should move you to want the best for it. It also helps to feel a little indignant as you size up your find, because grinding one’s teeth on behalf of the neglected thing can help fuel the effort to transform it.
Which brings me to the lion chair. My great grandparents brought the chair back with them from China in the early 1900s. It was later passed down to my grandmother. I had always loved it, growing up. But over the years, the chair had been forgotten. The fabric was worn and faded, the joints were loose, and the springs and stuffing had escaped the seat’s underside and hung almost to the floor. After our grandmother died, my siblings and I took turns choosing items from the estate. When my sister’s turn came, she chose the chair.
Here’s the lion chair in its former doleful state.
A few weeks later, my sister changed her mind. She offered to trade the chair for something I had chosen, and the lion chair was mine. I found a craftsman who had brought decades of upholstery experience from the old country, and he worked his magic. The lion chair woke from its long slumber.
Here’s the lion chair, refreshed. It has quite a fanbase now. Friends and readers tell me they’ve been out looking for a lion chair of their own.
