It Happened by Accident

A conversation piece, to happily sit in a corner of the lounge, hall, bedroom or kitchen. Like an oriental rug or a painting, there is no need to choose a co-ordinating or matching colour, in fact the more quirky the colour mix, the more eye-catching and effective it is.

The quirky Harlequin chair production started by accident, by a very good friend of Peter Betteridge who has a small upholstery production workshop at Long Eaton, near Nottingham.

Peter used to often get them to make unusual, bespoke sofas and chairs for his family-run furniture company.

During a visit to their showroom, Peter spotted a chair in a corner that was covered in random fabrics. He was told that it had been made by mistake, apparently a designer from Scotland had come to the workshop with a bag of fabric and left a message saying she wanted a chair covered with the fabric in the bag.

When hand-making bespoke sofas and chairs, there are inevitably ends of fabric remaining when the furniture is completed. Many fabrics used cost in excess of £100 per metre.

Historically these ends would be destined for the remnants bin but on this occasion, due to an unusual chain of events, the first quirky Harlequin chair was born.

Peter put the chair into his car and bought it back to Kingsbridge, and while displaying it in his showroom the response from customers was very encouraging – people loved it.

So Peter asked for half a dozen quirky harlequin chairs to be made using random mixes of fabrics, and the rest is history.

Unique

These chairs, which are of a classic design, start life with the time-served highly skilled upholsterers and seamstresses, who now sift through the fabrics available, picking out colours and designs to put together to make truly unique chairs. Unique in that we can only make one of each chair.

Hand Upholstered 

Each chair is hand-upholstered with a solid beech frame which is glued, screwed and dowelled, fitted with a coil 14 spring seat unit and a mesh top.

Mix of Colours

The sometimes unexpected mix of colours and designs incorporated together in one piece of furniture makes for a very unusual ’statement’ piece that would happily sit in the corner of a lounge, bedroom or hall but in any case it will always be a quirky Harlequin chair.