Updating Antique Furniture

 The Wall Street Journal recently ran an interesting article on updating antique and antique style sofas. Designers seem to appreciated the form and particularly the exposed wood frames and are updating with more contemporary looking upholstery. I dont think this will mean there will be a run on antique sofas, but it is nice to see, and perhaps additional pieces of antique furniture can be worked into the decorators schemes and installations.

The Wall Street Journal reports

“I HAVE A HARD time understanding why everyone would want the same furniture as his or her neighbor,” said Washington, D.C., interior decorator Darryl Carter. “It’s more pleasing to me to find an orphaned object few people would even notice.”

Recently, Mr. Carter did just that. Looking past the velvet-striped upholstery of an early 20th-century American Empire-style sofa and focusing on the exposed-wood frame’s natural grace, Mr. Carter saw potential for reinvention.

Designers are appreciating anew the inherent sculpture of formal vintage and antique sofas, whether spied in a posh antique shop, scrolled upon on eBay or brought to them by a sentimental client.

(A note here on nomenclature: The use of “sofa” and “couch” interchangeably is common among nonprofessionals but drives purists bonkers. Technically, a couch has no back.)

A client of Dallas-based designer Jan Showers inherited a grand, ormolu-mounted French Empire settee. “It had been handed down generations in her family and had a very mumsy fabric—undoubtedly not the original—that she didn’t love,” said Ms. Showers. But the bones were great, so Ms. Showers played them up with sleek, yellow matte-silk upholstery.

Though buying a frame and rebuilding a couch can easily cost a few thousand dollars, the same as a new product from a contemporary manufacturer, Mr. Carter notes that the result functions as much as art as seating. And sometimes simply swapping out the fancy damask on an old couch for Irish linen, fine wool or thin matte velvet sufficiently revitalizes an old piece, said the designer. “Subtle changes can vastly refresh these pieces into a modern vernacular,” he said.

‘Look past the mumsy fabric, and focus on the ‘bones.’’
Mr. Carter’s project required a bit more than subtle changes, however: The sofa’s fussy pleated back was smoothed out and its three existing seat cushions replaced with a single, slim feather-and-Dacron-filled cushion. (Down-filled cushions are especially welcoming, because previous sitters leave imprints that say, “It’s OK to touch,” he noted). The piece was reupholstered in white kid leather for high contrast with the dark frame, and decorative passementerie was abandoned in favor of diminutive bronze nail heads.

Not all rehabs need yield so rarified a piece. Kids, pets, dinner-party guests—all are welcome to drape themselves on Susan Hable’s pair of antique daybeds. The Athens, Ga., artist and textile designer upholstered the furniture’s tops with plush, cream-colored Moroccan wedding blankets and used a large-scale magenta print of her own design on the undersides. But it’s not just the touchable textiles that make the pieces so inviting. “The daybed form is so open that it says, ‘Perch on me!’ ” Ms. Hable added. And, yes, strictly speaking, you may call her daybeds couches.

This American Federal Inlaid Mahogany sofa frame sold at Christie’s Auction House this year for $5,000. PHOTO: CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2016

Search for an antique sofa like a serious collector and you can pay $30,000 at auction for a Duncan Phyfe American Federal example from the early 19th century. Or you can go to an estate or yard sale, or browse Etsy and eBay, and pick up a settee that a great- granddaughter is anxious to ditch for a few hundred dollars. Also worth considering: perches that were part of a style revival—like Darryl Carter’s American Empire-style find, which was inspired by sofas that date to the mid 19th century but was produced in the early 20th. These often cost less than the more-precious forbearers.

As for a quality check, if you’re not buying for investment, said Mr. Carter, “you can generally ascertain the condition of a piece intuitively when you sit on it. Is it sturdy? Does it need obvious repair?”

The price of a gut reno of a sofa (replacing webbing, springs and filler) will vary depending on which region of the country you’re in but often begins at $1,000. Molly Andrews Burke, the founder of Chairloom, a Philadelphia-based workroom that draws clients from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, specializes in pairing contemporary designer textiles with vintage and antique furniture. “When we reupholster a piece we take it down to its frame. At that point we can strengthen anything needing attention structurally and improve the piece in more ways than simply reupholstering.” Fabric required can range from 12 to 20 yards, and cost depends on your aesthetic demands. Cotton twill runs approximately $25 a yard, while designer silk velvet can run $400 a yard.

Source: The Wall Street Journal