I can hear the derisive snickers out there. You’re all thinking:
“It followed his wife home? Sure!”
As Roy as my witness, I promise you the story I am about to tell is true. I can’t make this stuff up.
I can embellish…
It is a closely guarded secret that I spend my spare time visiting auctions and antiques shops, recording and documenting the rare treasures I find there. It is our past. It is our legacy. It defines who we are as a species. It’s a bunch of old stuff people don’t want anymore yet has some perceived value.
On occasion, my wife will accompany me to an auction preview. It is usually my second visit. I know she has no interest in spending two hours admiring and photographing every item that was made before McKinley was president. It is one of the things that makes our marriage work. I don’t insist she spends hours staring at old wood objects and she doesn’t insist I accompany her to the beach. Exceptions have been made in certain extreme situations. We must all be flexible.
A recent auction caught my wife’s attention. It was the quarterly catalog auction and it included wine. One cannot actually preview the wine but one can read the list and do research. My wife is very organized and likes to read lists and do research. She found a lot of three bottles of Napa wines that she managed to get significantly below current North Carolina retail, if she could find it.
Buoyed by this success, she decided she wanted to hit the auction preview with me. The evening before the auction, I made my second visit and she made her first. She was better prepared. She has studied the online descriptions and had a list of items she wanted to see. I had a vague notion of what I needed more pictures of.
She quickly dismissed most of her list. The rugs were the wrong size or color. The decorative accessories were in worse shape than the casual collector could tolerate. There was one item on the list she really liked, an English settle.
English Style Settle
This lot has sold.
Description: Early 20th century, oak and pine, barrel form with shaped arms, curved seat.
About settles. We have had a front porch in need of a settle since we moved in. I know just the settle I want to build. The problem is that I have not delivered said settle. The wood is not even in the shop. Nothing on the calendar. I was slightly hurt that she wanted to buy one but I got over it.
The morning of the auction, I attempted to enter our carefully considered maximum bid, saw that we were already $80 below the current bid, talked and bumped it $100. Then when my wife wasn’t looking, I added another $40.
That night she asked what it went for. I told her that it closed above our second bid. I waited ten minutes to tell her of the third bid that was successful. She forgave me my subterfuge.
And here it is:
Front view.
We had to place it flat against the wall. Being relatively lightweight pine, it makes a great sail. I was going to build mine from whire oak.
Here you see the barrel form:
I bet when new, the boards overlapped.
A nice bent molding.
A relatively shallow settle:
Shallow and not very deep.
Relatively simple construction:
No dovetails. And yet I bought it.
Nothing fancy on the sides:
A simple bridle on the armrest.
Joinery so simple, I could make it.
All I need to do is learn to turn spindles.
An interesting square patch. I wonder what the wound was.
Looking at the bottom, I could see that it has been stripped. It had gone through most of its life covered with mustard colored paint:
Or is it flax, Naples yellow, arylide yellow, or citrine?
I suggested to my wife that for the sake of authenticity, we restore the mustard paint. She was not impressed by this notion.
I expressed my concern that this pine bench might not survive long outside, even on a covered porch. Her response was, “Well, if it only lasts two or three years, it gives us time to find something else.”
I thought, “I have shared a bed with this woman for 26 years and right now, she is a stranger to me. I don’t know this person.”
Fortunately, as an adult, I have a filter and what came out was, “Well, OK.”
This brings up two questions. Firstly, is this a historic and significant piece of furniture or just old? On some level I believe that every piece of furniture ever built needs to be lovingly preserved until we run out of PODS and U-Haul storage units. This is not realistic. Some furniture must die so others can live.
Second question, what is the best non-opaque finish to use on this settle? It will require a fairly high level of UV resistance. My first thought was a good marine spar varnish.
I am willing to entertain other suggestions.