"Comfort is perhaps the ultimate luxury"
Billy Baldwin
If someone told me I could only have one piece of furniture I would pick a chair. A bed is a nice thing to own of course, tables certainly come in handy and I don't know where I would be without bookshelves, but when I design a room I very often start with a chair. Not just any chair but with one with character! A chair can have a personality and can tell you a lot about who lives in the space it inhabits.
A good chair can look just as wonderful stark naked as it can dressed in the most exquisite or simplest of fabrics. A chair with "good bones" can "wear" anything, but oh when you dress it properly!
I own LOTS of chairs, but the chair that I chose as the centerpoint for my library is my Papa's chair. This beloved classic Bergere chair has had many lives and worn a wide range of fabrics over its more than eight decades. When this sweet chair came to live with me I knew that only a fabric with joy would cover it. Getting there,however proved a bigger challenge than fitting it though my doll house sized front door. The chair originally had glorious cane sides that had become brittle cracked over the years and because of how the chair was originally constructed the cane could not be replaced. I was devastated. Tampering with Papa's chair would not have made Nana happy I knew and to lose such a critical part of its charm and grace was like losing a piece of my past. To console myself I did what I often do when having a bad day--I go fabric hunting. I wanted something bold yet elegant and chose a silk dupioni buffalo check in what else blue and white...the chair and I adored it and I proceeded to create my library around the same chair my Grandfather sat in each evening to read his newspaper. Every library needs the perfect chair and I had mine. Situated next to the fire and ready for a bag of yarn and a great book. The dupioni however rebelled against my plan for it..One day as i walked by my chair I noticed what was once blue and white was now green and yellow-though I had been careful to place it away from direct light as silk can be so fragile something in in its makeup was not happy. The newly dressed chair needed to be stripped again and I was once more on the hunt for fabric that was worthy of my special chair.
I don't take fabric selection lightly. I comb through every book and bolt until I find "it" and that can take some time and determination. If you think finding the perfect man is a job often the same can be true for the right fabric to compliment and marry a good chair. The fabric I wanted should make a statement but should also allow the chair to be itself and show off its lines and detail. I am a "know when I see it" kind of girl for pretty much every thing in my life and when I came across the Jab crewel in the perfect blues and with movement that reflected the curves of the chair--nothing, even the price, could keep me away. The fabric and the chair and the library are all living at Camp Moneypit hopefully in harmony and with lots of good reading still in its future.
