It's Fench! I have another chair, the day after the disappointment of discovering my frame was too far gone. Also a Napolean III but with a square back. Such luck! Seeing another stripped down frame from this family of chairs has reinforced my obsession with them. I love the delicacy and slight scroll/turn of the arms. I love the rather plain, but all the more tasteful for it, legs. The narrow back relative to wide front rail proportionally is just very pleasing to my eye. I'm tempted to upholster this chair using several techniques that can be employed together - deep buttoning and piping to emphasise the arm scrolls. These are two techniques that I have not yet heavily applied to a chair so feels like this will be the last, best opportunity to do so as a student. However, looking at many examples of upholstered chairs in the style, seems that less is more and non-fabric manipulated plain application really highlights the demure simplicity of the frame. so maybe that's the way to go?
One of the first things I did as an upholstery student was to strip down a traditional dining chair. My chair had been sourced by a fellow student as one of a pair. I remember picking it up at Waterloo station. It was covered with a black bin bag as of course it was raining in London that day. I took it back home on the tube and used it as a seat for the journey. Thankfully, it held up throughout. Having seen the state of a fair number of traditional chairs since; this is no longer something that I take for granted. The frame was a beautiful 18th century shield back style armless dining chair. I hadn't appreciated the number of layers and fixtures I would find in such an unassuming, relatively small and compact seat. Held together by a massive number of tacks, staples, and cord; this dining chair was truly traditional and stripping down the layers gave me an appreciation for the amount of work that goes into upholstering a traditional chair. Something to look forward t...

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