Thursday, February 29, 2024

Heirloom Chair

Creating the Heirloom

I had the idea to collaborate with my forebears, long ago deceased,
to create an heirloom chair that might manage to stay in the family.
The hope is to have the chair be a symbol of the family's creativity,
to be more than just an old chair.

My grandfather William Welles Lyman (1888-1969) loved furniture and was a skilled craftsman.

His woodworking was a hobby, but he sold some items. I inherited a reproduction Chippendale chair, seen in the photo below, that he made sometime around 1920. I do not know the exact date.

Here he is in about 1955, many years after he made the chair:

Here is the chair to the left of the buffet in the dining room:

Grandpa Lyman's sister - his only sibling - Great Aunt Virginia Lyman (1886-1969) was a painter.

I inherited some of her artwork, including this painting:

This is Aunt Virginia in her brother's dining room in Norwich, Connecticut in 1959. I am the little girl to the left.

Here is Virginia painting en plein air:

...and in her studio:

Process

The chair came to me with a faded and drab-looking seat.

I went online to see if needlepoint seat covers would be appropriate:

Yes!

This photo shows the painting by Aunt Virginia, my sketch scaled down for transfer to needlepoint canvas, and way in the background, the portrait of Welles' and Virginia's grandmother, Rosina Newport Blagrove (seen in the photo of the dining room above), that I also inherited:

This photo shows the needlepoint canvas rolled on a loom, with the design transferred.

I used Sharpie pens and acrylic markers.

Below shows the stitching with Persian needlepoint wool well underway.

I realized that this project was going to take much longer than I thought! 20 stitches per inch, that's 400 stitches per square inch. With the piece about 18 inches by 18 inches... well, that multiples out to about 130,000 stitches total. I listened to many audio books while stitching! This project took hours and hours and hours!

I had a stash of yarns that I wanted to use that included two 30-yard skeins of vintage Rhode Island Persian Point in off-white. I felt the forces of the universe were aligning with my goals, as I wanted the background to be just that shade of off-white.

But I hit a snag. My estimate was way off. The canvas really sucked up the yardage!

I was able to find more of the same color on EBay. BUT, whether because of storage conditions or simply a different dye-lot, the color white did not exactly match. I did my best to blend.