Some of our older pieces

[Lily left the valley]

I've been saying I'll take pictures of these, and here they finally are.

When you click to embiggen, my usual banter can be seen about each. The piano is the oldest. The chair is the baby in the bunch, I think. I should check again one of these days for the mark.

[phil]

I have a red leather chair that looks so much like that black one. it had a government sticker so it probably came from some institution. on mine the leather is a bit torn on the seat but the leather is super heavy duty stuff. It was well made . mine is very low to sit in but I guess that was the style. do you have any idea on age?
the wardrobe/dresser is really nice!

[Lily left the valley]

I forgot to mention above that the handles on the chifforobe and vanity are bakelite. One of these days I'm going to have a sit down and polish all the bakelite pieces we have. I still have two drawer pulls in the kitchen I need to get the paint off.

When I lifted the cushion (which is fully covered both sides--no cheapie patch of other fabric on the one side), and saw the label ghost, I remembered why I had no memory of mark or age. I know we have a few labels in some box or another, but I'm not sure if we ever had this one since we bought the chair.

Welp, now I'm bummed but not bummed at the same time. I flipped over the chair and realized what I thought was leather is not. I'm wondering if it's one of those pleathers that has leather bits in it though because it certainly smells like leather. We're both a bit baffled, really, but the fabric back that's typical of synthetics was evident, as can be seen in one of the images below.

This is a bummer because it's not leather. Yet it's not a bummer because it means the price I paid back then was still very reasonable (just not as much of a steal as I thought), and also because it means the various scratches and such this pretty darn near facsimile fabric took over the years will go away when we replace it with leather down the road. One nice thing is the cotton batting is all cotton, not a mix or synthetic, and all the springs and spring spacers (? not sure of vocab there) all seem to be there.

The wheel caps and the horsehair are the only bits that I suppose could help date the piece other than shape. The wheels are only on the front. The back legs are without. I couldn't remember it being a low seat, so I sat in it to check, and although if I perch on the middle/front of the cushion, my knees are slightly higher than my waist, if I sit fully back, it's actually a perfect sized chair for me--my knees are right at the cushion front edge with feet on the floor. (5'6" tall, if that matters for comparison.)

What was also interesting, was with the fabric panel now taken away that was over the springs underneath, was finding other staple ghosts. I took some pictures where you can see that. Curiously, they are only on one side of the chair, the other supports do not have these same ghosts, but the wood is of like age/structure.

I never thought it was a true antique, but it's nice to know it's not a modern knock off at least, time wise.