So here's the story about my chair.
I’ve been addicted to Design*Sponge lately, especially the house makeovers and DIY projects. They’ve inspired me to start going to thrift stores again. Why should hipsters in Brooklyn and SF have a monopoly on finding cool stuff? Sometimes it seems like the Internet has killed thrifting—rarely does one find a hidden treasure these days. Even if something turns up in, like, a dumpster in rural Alabama, someone puts it on eBay and sells it to some design-conscious urbanite.
Nonetheless, Design*Sponge has renewed my faith and convinced me that once again, thrifting is worth my time. As luck would have it, there are a lot of thrift stores in my neighborhood, but after visiting 2 of them a few months ago I decided their furniture was overpriced. However, this weekend I checked out a different one that I hadn’t been to before, and that’s where I hit the jackpot.
Not realizing how big the furniture section was, I looked at clothes for a long time before I worked my way over to the furniture. I found a very nice skirt and a dress. Then, when I got to the furniture, I was drawn to a grouping of midcentury-looking pieces that included the chair. It was dark-finished wood with sage green vinyl upholstery, and a great modernist design--simple, clean, with nothing extraneous, just the minimum number of elements that it needed. It looked special, so I asked the woman trying out the settee near it that had similar upholstery whether she was also looking at the chair. I was willing to be a courteous shopper and ignore the chair if she was already planning to buy it; besides, at that point I didn't know the chair was anything special. But she wasn't, so I focused in on the chair. I had a nice conversation with the woman about thrifting, then when she left to look at other things I looked under it. To my delight, it had a vintage Knoll sticker! Since the chair was priced at $40, I knew this was a magical find. Sold! I had to buy it.
I told an employee and they took the chair to the back so I could pick it up after I paid for it, and stressed that I needed to get in line because the store was going to close at 1 pm. I waited in the long line, and when I got up to the register and explained that the tag I was holding was for the chair they had taken to the back, a man approached me and offered me $100 for the chair. I said “Nope!” without even considering his offer—I would much rather have the satisfaction of getting this wonderful chair for $40 and putting it in my living room. The man kept upping his offer. “I’ve been looking for this chair for years to complete my set,” he said. But I didn’t budge. He went up to $350 and offered to throw in the other chair like it that was smaller and that he was buying from the store. But I didn’t want that one, I wanted this one because it’s an armchair, which is exactly what I needed for my living room. So I kept saying no. Meanwhile, there were tons of people in line behind me, and as this was going on, people were saying, “Wow, now I want to see that chair!” and “Yeah, somebody bring it up here!” But I fended off the guy’s offers and paid for the chair and the dress and skirt. I told the saleslady and the crowd, “I look like a jerk but I don’t feel like one.” I wasn’t being a jerk, really, but I wondered if I looked like one just because I was standing my ground about the fact that I found the chair and I was going to buy it, and that was non-negotiable. I felt like a New Yorker.
When I drove around to the loading dock, another man was there with stuff he had bought—several nice chairs and the settee that the woman had been looking at. He started offering to buy my chair too, and I said “What, you too?” but he replied “That was my partner in there.” I decided that those gay dudes probably had plenty of other great furniture. They seemed like the kind of people that normally make these finds, so I refused to feel bad for them. So, I made off with my chair—the only way it fit in my car was by folding the front passenger seat back so it was laying on the back seat.
Today at work I did some research and found out even more good news. The chair was designed by Franco Albini, an important Italian architect whose work is actually in a metalwork show that I researched for the MFAH this year. It was produced between 1949 and 1967. When I told my boss all this, she was very impressed that I scored the chair. Finally, to top it all off, a cursory Internet search has suggested that it’s worth about $1,000!
Current Mood: 
ecstatic
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determined
curious
artistic
accomplished
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awake
jubilant
content
