This chair was discovered at a market in Auckland for $100 and once the upholstery was removed it turned out to be a genuine 18thC French chair.  It is made from beech, a hard tightly-grained timber, which was typical for chairs of this type.  Their elegance derives from the sinewy “feminine” form of them which requires wood of great strength.  It is not an especially attractive timber but this did not matter as the chair was originally painted, alongside the hand-tool marks on the frame you can also see traces of the original paint. 

 

The photos show how degraded the chair had become over its 250-year-old life, most intriguing was an old repair – probably 19thC – that had been done in kauri, which means the chair had needed significant repair in NZ over a century ago so the chair has been here a long time. Almost as interesting were two massive screws dating from at least the 1830’s that had been put through the front of the chair legs to stiffen them up without going to the enormous effort and cost of de-upholstering the chair and rebuilding it.  The chair was a little time capsule.