On Monday I was postponing tackling my laundry and dirty dish pile by browsing around the thrift store. On the bottom shelf, covered in a layer of dust I came across a REALLY beat up harp back chair that was priced at
under three bucks.
This style chair is also called a “Lyre Back chair" because of the greek inspired motif on the seat back. Famed American furniture maker,
Duncan Phyfe made this style of chair very popular back in the 1800s. “Real” harp back chairs from that time period can be worth thousands of dollars. This is clearly a modern reproduction, probably from the 40s. It wasn’t marked, so I didn’t feel bad updating it.
Original Phyfe chairs are almost always made out of red mahogany and even the reproductions tend to go with that look. This chair clearly was clearly not mahogany. (If it were I'd have cut it up for
a project like this!) The scratches revealed a much lighter wood underneath. Even though finish had deep scratches and the seat was damaged, I figured it was only three bucks. If it didn’t work out I wasn’t out much.. less than a cup of my daily Starbucks, so I brought her home.
In the past two days I completely transformed it. And she is so pretty now, I’ve decided to keep it and use it to replace my yuck-o office chair in my sewing studio. (She no longer looks like a Duncan Phyfe piece, that is okay, since she never really was!)