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Cabinets, Furniture, Woodworks/restoring tooled leather chairs

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Expert: - 12/24/2010


Question

chairs
Hi Mr. Miller, I've been looking through the archive of questions you've answered and I'm really impressed with how informative and helpful your answers are. My husband and I recently "rescued" a set of six antique wooden chairs with tooled leather upholstery, and we would like to know how to restore them while preserving as much as we can of the original character.

Unfortunately three of the chairs have cracks in the leather. I know there's not much to be done about that. The fabric underneath the seats is also fraying and tearing in some of the cases. They seem to be stuffed with straw. What advice would you give us?

Answer
Hello Mrs. Phillips,

Thank you for the compliments regarding my past replies.  I believe that a great amount of the value in your chairs is in the irreplaceable leather.  I doubt the backs need anything other than perhaps a good saddle soap treatment to preserve the leather upholstery.

The seats is another issue.  I would do everything I can to preserve the leather.  And, if possible, the decorative nails.  

It is possible to restore these seats from the bottom of the frame,  cutting out the existing padding and webbing and replacing all from underneath the chair without disturbing the upholstery.  Doing that job will require a very skilled upholsterer who is familiar with restoring antiques.  In my opinion,  the more preferred way would be to remove the leather on all seats,  completely replace all inside filling material with new, and then replacing the existing leather,  even the leather that has torn could possibly be re-inforced.   That too should be done by a very skilled upholsterer.  

I feel very strongly that no one but a very experienced upholsterer should attempt to restore these chairs.  So I believe that your challenge is to find an upholsterer with the skills to restore these chairs.

If,  you have no interest in preserving the existing upholstery then the job is fairly simple,  remove everything down to the bare frame,  re-glue the frames if necessary,  replace all padding materials and webbing and upholster the chairs.

I hope this is the information you were looking for,  please don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of further help.  Good luck with this job.  You have a really super nice set of chairs - congratulations on your fantastic find.

Mark Miller.  

Mark H. Miller

Expertise

custom furniture upholsterery. Became journeyman custom upholsterer in 1969. Certified by Upholsterers Intl. Union. Worked at San Francisco`s most prestigious upholstering shop as senior upholsterer. Am now president of Domar Upholstered Furniture Inc. Have upholstered for Presidents Reagan, Nixon, Clinton and the Queen of England. formerly taught classes in custom upholstering at the San Francisco Community College. Happy to answer all your upholstering questions.

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