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Vintage Chairs with a Modern Twist

Galapagos-Claire Gaudion-Vermarette Rose Chair 4

I do get fed up with having to be practical. I mean it’s so boring isn’t it? I mean I know we have to think carefully about longevity and what we’re spending and how long it will last and all that but I do get bored with all those safe colour choices that people make.

In my experience, you often find that no one colour is more or less practical than any other. A dog will moult black on the white floor and white on the black floor and mud is mud wherever it lands.

In our last house (when the boys were small) we had sort of pinkish slate (ok mud coloured) hall tiles and a chocolate brown carpet on the stairs. Now, you’re right in thinking it didn’t show the dirt at all. So we didn’t really clean it. It was probably filthy. Now in a house with (larger but no less messy boys) the floors are white. I see the dirt. I flick the mop about.

Galapagos-Designs-11.7.169930

This is all by way of a long winded justification introduction to the work of Galapagos Designs and their gorgeous chairs. I just need that pink and gold chair. I mean there may have to be a slight ban on people sitting on it in dark jeans but hell, I’m fine with that. I don’t wear dark jeans and as long as I can elbow my mother-in-law out of the doorway and get to the chair before her then she can sit on the (practical) dark grey sofa with her dark blue jeans with their rivets and so on.

We are all very wary of using pattern in our homes and tend to stick to plain, and practical, colours, leaving the fun for the cushions. Which is sensible I know but don’t you just yearn for a bit of mad, mental pattern/colour? I know I do.

Galapagos-Designs - Bartholomew Alana Chalk Pink Steel - July 2016

My Grandmother had a white armchair. I know, it seems extraordinary now but I don’t recall it being dirty. It lived mostly in the corner so it wasn’t sat on every day and, in all honesty, I’m not sure my Grandmother ever actually met anyone who wore jeans much less let them into the house, but for an occasional chair needs to provide occasional seating and, mostly, be decorative (am I being chairist?) why not be a little bit daring? Have fun and cheer up your interiors.

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And if you’re still nervous, they do do amazing cushions…..I’m off to see I have the skillz to photoshop that chair into my living room.

Kate Watson-Smyth

The author Kate Watson-Smyth

I’m a journalist who writes about interiors mainly for The Financial Times but I have also written regularly for The Independent and The Daily Mail. My house has been in Living Etc, HeartHome and featured in The Wall Street Journal & Corriere della Sera. I also run an interior styling consultancy Mad About Your House. Welcome to my Mad House.

3 Comments

  1. I’m considering the same thing at the moment – I’ve just bought a pair of 1930s Heals bentwood armchairs – do I recover the cushions in a sensible textured off-white/cream/light grey or do I go for a crazy French geometric from someone like Pierre Frey…

  2. Ha! You read my mind. It’s so tiresome being practical. Just turned 60. Time to live it up before…you know.

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