Tillie
Every now and again I do a project where I become so invested in the story, and the time spent that I don’t really want to give it back. Tillie, named after her original owner, Great Aunt Tillie, was one of those.
Tillie is a family heirloom dating back to the 1920s. (How intimidated am I to be working on a 100 year old family heirloom? Totally.) Tillie was purchased new c.1923, likely as a wedding gift. And golly, what a gift. By the state of this frame, it would have been a high end gift indeed. There is not one bit of scrap lumber inside. The entirety of the frame was hard wood. You just don’t see that today. Despite owning this beautiful chair, Great Aunt Tillie lived a very modest but generous life. Her great, grand nephew, remembers visiting Great Aunt Tillie in her home over the years, and it was he who inherited the chair, untouched after 100 years in the same home. When I received Tillie, the chair, she was in pretty tough shape, but I was excited to try to bring her back. Tillie’s owner is an accomplished furniture refinisher hobbyist, so I stripped Tillie down removing all her original fabrics and fills so that her owner, the nephew, could take Tillie’s frame home to strip and refinish in his spare time.
Of course we completely rebuilt Tillie from the frame up reusing the pieces that were salvageable. Tillie’s frame featured a unique suspension system we were able to reuse. The jute support system that the springs are attached to underneath can be tightened as needed by simply turning the thumbscrews. Interestingly, while the springs had fallen out of the bottom when I received the chair, it wasn’t the support system that failed. The jute straps had simply rotted away over 100 years. While I could have modernized this system, it had worked for the previous 100 years, so why mess with that? We put in new jute straps, reattached and retied the springs. For the upholsterers among us, this is an edgewire system.
Though Tillie was originally upholstered in what appeared to be a blue period chenille the family chose a Stacy Garcia Crypton Home fabric called Ascend. It’s a very soft performance chenille that works some magic with the art deco aura of the piece. Note the unique channels on the inside arms. I used the original fabric and padding as a pattern, but my channels were fluffier than Tillie came in with. I had to assume they had simply flattened out over time. I wasn’t satisfied with the voids that were created by the arm channels next to a straight cushion shape, so I created a shaped cushion to bump up against the new channels and fill the voids. Notice also the lush cushioning on the inside back that wraps delicately over the beautiful frame. It just invites you to grab a book, snuggle up, and rest your head. And perhaps that’s exactly what Great Aunt Tillie did, too.
Alas, gorgeous Tillie’s family wanted her back, and I had to let her go. Fly free, beautiful Tillie. Here’s to 100 more years in memory of Great Aunt Tillie.
