Thinking about value

Wall art from reclaimed wood

As an upcycler/restorer, I make pieces out of things that other people were planning to throw away. Pallets that were to be consigned to the fire, have become wall art, or dog beds. Items of furniture that had been damaged by damp, have gained a new lease on life.

Before

After

I am also commissioned to restore things. Patio sets for two different clients, a candelabra for another, tables, counter tops... all manner of things. Even a picture. Fret not, it's not the art work I'm restoring, or we might have a repeat of this!

Failed restoration

What I have discovered is that there is no predicting what has value to people.

In the book version of the Harry Potter series, there is a very touching insight into Neville Longbottom that wasn't included in the movies. Having been tortured by Voldemort's bunch, his parents reside permanently in a mental hospital. Neville and his grandmother visit them there. Each time, as they leave, Neville's mother presses a shiny sweet wrapper into his hand, with the air of someone bestowing a gift of great value. Neville treasures those wrappers - not for what they are, but for what they represent.

Just because an antique dealer would turn his/her nose up at a reproduction table with a plywood top, is not to say that it doesn't have great sentimental value to someone who grew up seeing that table every time they went to visit Granny and Grampa. Just because it would be cheaper to chuck out a little patio set and buy a new one made of PVC, doesn't mean that it isn't worth restoring to the person who bought it with their very first pay cheque. Just because a picture is a print in a damaged frame, doesn't mean it isn't the most precious piece of art to someone for whom it brings back memories of a late, much loved relative.

It is up to me to see these things through the eyes of the owners. The people to whom these things are so valuable that they are prepared to pay me (or someone like me) to do everything I can to extend its life and to make it look pretty again. It is up to me to handle them like the treasures they are.

Scars and the tales they tell

I recently acquired three Ercol red dot children's chairs. They had been bought new by a family with two sons (no-one is quite sure why three chairs for two boys) who are now men with families of their own.

Both parents have subsequently died and the sons are busy disposing of their parents' belongings. The chairs formed an integral part of their childhood memories, and the plan was the sand them down, restore them and use them in their own homes. But their own children have outgrown kiddy chairs, and with full time jobs, homes to run, families to raise and lives to lead, finding the time was proving too difficult. So they decided to sell the chairs to someone who would take the time to restore them.

That someone proved to be me.

The chairs show clear signs of having survived the childhoods of two rambunctious boys and their various friends. Presumably the grandchildren used them, too, when they went to visit. There are scratches in the wood, some of which probably deserve the word 'gouges'; the points of the various bits are chipped; they are long overdue for an oiling. Everything you would expect from a piece of furniture half a century (or so) old.

So there I stood, sandpaper in hand, with a decision to make: before I apply lashings of nourishing and preserving oil, do I sand the beautiful elm wood right down until it is blemish free and perfect...and ever so slightly differently shaped from the original? Or do I sand away the worst of the damage, to leave some of the history while removing the risk of splinters for the next little person to sit in the chairs?

I went with column B. The chairs have had their own story. I hope their stories will continue for several decades yet. I don't know how each of the scratches and chips was caused, but I do know that each one has been part of the journey. If you want a blemish-free piece of furniture, you buy a new one. If you want a piece of history, you want it have evidence of said history.

Or so I think, anyway.

It put me in mind of an incident that happened when my niece was a little girl. She was in my Mom's bedroom as my Mom was getting dressed and she asked with a gasp of pure admiration, "Granny, how did you get those pretty finsil (silver) lines on your bum?" Said niece is now a gown woman in her thirties. She almost certainly has 'pretty finsil lines' of her own, and no doubt she hates them as much as my mother hated hers back then. We're raised with the idea that we're to go through life's storms without collecting evidence of the battles we've won (or at least survived). Those stretch marks which bear evidence to the fact that we carried the next generation within ourselves for a time. Those wrinkles that declare that we have been around since before the current norm was the norm...and we're still standing.

More recently: my son was features on the front page of an ice hockey match programme for this weekend. I WhatsApped a copy to my family abroad. Both my mother and my sister - who haven't seen my son in years (such is the reality of living on different continents) remarked on the scar in the middle of my son's forehead. They remember that scar. They remember how he got it: flying at mach 1 into a doorpost. They have seen it featured in every single photograph of my son for the past 20 years and change since he acquired it. It's part of him. It's part of his story. They know how it epitomises the no-holds-barred approach my son still has to life - that he lives at full tilt, with no sense of self-preservation, and saves nothing for the swim back (if you can name the movie from which that reference is drawn, you get extra brownie points).

Vintage is in. You only need to look at an events calendar, or a TV schedule to see how sought after it is. We want things with a past, a history. We want things that look as if they have a tale to tell. Perhaps it's time to adopt the same attitude towards ourselves?

Anyhoo, before I wax too philosophical, let me end this particular anecdote with before and after pictures. The chairs have been uploaded to my Folksy shop.

Before

Sanded and oiled