Canadian Bent Wood Chair

 

 

 

Sonya scored this little bent wood chair while we still lived out in Vancouver, from the awesome Cloverdale Sunday flea market.  We scored many, many awesome things from that crappy little flea (I'll post up a couple of examples later) like this chair. I haven't been able to ID a maker yet, but this is midcentury Canadian bent wood at its best. I love the curve of the back legs, the little handhold cutout, but most of all the underside of the seat! Sadly the dark staining isn't really matching up with the other stuff we have going on at the moment so this chair is unloved down in the basement graveyard.  

My favourite Canadian Design websites

I check this site pretty much everyday, they always have something cool & new to show me. It's the single best Canadian Design site on the net. Todd Falkowsky kicks ass!
http://www.canadiandesignresource.ca

Also Rachel Gotlieb and the rest of the team at the Canadian Design Exchange have been at the forefront of the appreciation of Canadian Design longer than anyone. Rachel has written some of the most seminal tomes on Canadian design, most resently her great book with Nina Munk on the Clairtone company.
http://www.dx.org

Those are my top two. I need more, any suggestions?

Walter Nugent Lounge Chair - circa 1960

  

 

It has taken me a few months to ID this Walter Nugent chair. I believe it's a variation on his C-15 lounge chair.This one has rounded legs and seem to have a lower stance than the one on the Canadian Design Resource site (which is the greatest Canadian design site around). There are another couple of different one on Flicker as well. I guess Nugent knocked these out for a decade or so, starting around 1960. The element that gives it away for me, are the chair's arms, there's a distinctive flair in the back 1/3 of the arms.

I love this little guy - we picked him up on the westside of Ottawa (home of best thrifting in Canada) one afternoon. The original upholstery was redone at some point with this jaunty grey wool stripe, there were no tags underneath. I think the wood is teak, but it may be oak or maple (actually it's made from walnut, Thanks John!).

Folding Bentwood Plywood midcentury Rocking Lounge Chair - best dump score EVER!

I don't know about where you live, but because we live outside a small town, we have a local dump where we go to on the weekends to get rid of our garage & recycling. Every small town dump out here has a small shack where people leave free unwanted usable items. Our shack is a leaky trailer called 'New To You'. This place is like our local mall, it has given up many gems to me over the past 3 years. You have to sort through a lot of cheap broken china, Jackie Collins paperbacks and stained corporate coffee cups, but there's always something there I walk away with. Records, lamps, stereo equipment, silverware, and quite a bit of furniture.

This rocking chair was coated in about 40 years of thick dust stashed in a dark corner. I saw the bent plywood arms and knew it was something special. Once I got it home and was able to sit in it, it became apparent that this is something special. It is really well designed. Obviously it fold up nicely, but the bent wood work is really awesome. The seat and back have lovely cutaway slats through the plywood. The arms might look a bit short, but they're actually perfectly positioned to be of maximum comfort. There's a runner across at the front of the rockers that sits perfectly for your heels to rest on so the rocking motion is effortless. Words and pictures don't do this chair justice. It is my new favorite piece of furniture, and given that it was FREE  I would say it will be the score of the year come December (but check back then to see...).

If anyone has ANY info on this beauty, please let me know. It must have been mass produced.

Pair of Metal Emeco Navy style chairs - Canadian made by Simmons Limited, Montreal

Yesterday was a great day! This darling pair of chairs came from a 'secret spot' from down around the way from us for $1. I love Canadian metal office furniture. Canadians seem to have taken the time to elevate small details of the design that really make a piece sing out. These steel chairs made by Simmons Limited of Montreal are no exception. The chair style seems to be very reminiscent of the aluminum Emeco Navy chair. But I think these chairs are so much cooler. They're more refined. The legs struts have a beautiful inner curve to them that really compliment finer gauge of the steel tubing that was used. The Emeco chairs look brutish by comparison. I also love their institutional paint jobs, peach & pale yellow. We'll probably take them to some chair bodyshop and have them sandblasted and repainted something else (any suggestions?). The seat pads will be an easy re-do and then they'll be sweeeet, and cheap. This guy wants $979.00 (per chair!) for something similar.

I would ballpark these chairs for being made around 1959. Simmons would go on to become a major international mattress company with their 'Beautyrest' line of products (below is a 1959 article).

Simmons has brought Canadian homes, hospitals, hotels and institutions a beauty and comfort never before known. The products made by the company cover the familiar range of merchandise for which it is famous, such as mattresses, beds, springs, pillows, cribs, Hide-a-Beds, sofas, chairs, and other dual purpose furniture. Nowadays it also includes an impressive range of metal furniture, for hotels, motels, hospitals and institutions, and furnishings for ships (berths, bunks) and for lumber and mining camps. Indeed, Simmons is the pioneer manufacturer of metal bedroom furniture in Canada. Every detail, no matter how small, receives careful supervision and inspection. The Simmons' products combine the strength and durability of steel with the beauty and distinctive charm of the furniture makers' art. It is a simple job to keep Simmons' metal furniture lustrous for years because it has no cracks or crevices, and metal in itself gives protection against mice, vermin, warping and twisting. 

I need more of this furniture in my life.

Pair of 60's Canadian chairs with Stainless Steel frame and Wood armrests

We scored this pair at the Renfrew Salvation Army (great place, great staff) for $5. I'm not sure what kind of wood the armrests are from but I would guess oak. I'm not sure if the upholstery is original or not, it remind me of some beach towels we used to have. Sadly there's no tags on them, but the mix of stainless steel and wood is really appealing.

 

Danish Furniture Importing Company Ltd. - Pair of midcentury modern teak dining chairs

Actually I'm not sure if these chairs are teak or stained oak, but the label says they were made by the Danish Furniture Importing Company Ltd.. Google didn't generate a single hit on this Toronto based company, but the chairs look mid-60's or so. They kind of faintly remind me of Hans Wegner designs. At some point they were reupholstered and one chair is missing a back slat. I assume they're dining chairs from their high backs. We scored them from one of our 'down-low' spots way west of Ottawa, $10 for the pair. I don't think they'll get used by us, as we already have the sweetest dining room set ever made by a Canadian in the last century (and to be featured here later this spring, so please check back!).

Primitive Modern red Canadian school desk task chair

I regret selling this chair through craigslist. We scored it at the May long weekend Fireman's garage sale in Golden Lake along with several other cool things this summer, it was $1. Somehow the proportions don't quite seem right, I think the seat base was a retro-fit onto a childs chair frame. The legs seem too big as well. I think it was because of all these that the chair worked so well. Also the cut-out on the back panel heightens its midcentury vibe.

Mosaic tile metal art Tray

Trays, tea sets, salt & pepper shakers, all of them call out the siren song to Sonya. They find her and she cannot resist them. I would estimate we have in excess of 20 various trays at the moment. This one has a nice mix of metal & other tiles and has a metal underside and rim. We thought it was one-of-a-kind, but then we saw another that a friend scored 2 years ago at a garage sale. We got this one with a huge haul at a great farm sale on the Opeongo Rd. during the summer. The garage sales out here are sick, we killed it this year. I do not miss the city.

$5 Eames fibreglass shell chair

Easy come easy go. We got this yellow Eames side shell chair for $5 from a now-closed thrift store in Barry's Bay. It had an old office supply sticker on its underside. Since then we had to sell it last year to a nice girl from Ottawa, oh well. I miss it though, it was comfortable

Danish Teak Two Tier Tray "Made in Denmark"

We scored at the Deep River weekly thrift. $1.

Teak bent wood vintage Canadian magazine holder

Here's a nice Canadian-made teak bent wood magazine rack holder. It reminds me of Alvar Aalto. It has cutaway holes on either side. It's a bit chipped & scratched, but it holds records well.

Arthur R. Ball Co. Ltd. pair midcentury Mad Men leather office chairs

 

This is the awesome set of chairs we scored last year at this killer thrift in Toronto at Dundas & Broadview. I could imagine these sitting in Don Draper's office, but for now they're in our offices. They're made by Arthur R. Ball Co. Ltd., of Toronto. Google didn't pull any relevant info on Arthur Ball, but these Canadian-made Danish-style chairs appear to be made of oak, and stained to a teak colour. They're construction is fabulous, there's lovely bentwood arms, and great little cutaways on the backs of the chair runners that really add a lot of sophistication. I love them, they cost $20 apiece.

Moveis Corazza Brazil Teak Leather Couch & Chair set

Here is a teak couch & chair set we scored early in the spring this year for $40, at one of our favorite secret thrifts in Nepean. Sonya (sharp as ever, of course) spotted this as it was sitting in pieces outside in 2 feet of snow. We had to dig through the snow to find all the screws (and we're still missing one). But it was well worth the effort  - it took two separate trips to get it all back home with us - it looks great out on the back porch. This set is a monster, it's solid teak, with a great teak frame panel for the leatherette cushions. It's made by this 70's Brazilian department store company, Moveis Corazza.

Memphis Sottsass 80's Deco Tea Set

We picked up this nice looking unmarked tea set at Value Village off Bank St. in Ottawa for $5. It kind of reminds me of Ettore Sottsass Memphis designs