Certifying a Jens Risom arm chair--updated

Ain't she a beauty?

Back in 2005 or 2006, I was driving through my town in a cold rain and I went past a house where someone was moving out. There was a big heap of trash, but I saw this chair with some bright orange cushions. I pulled over, gave it a cursory inspection (Yes, it's a chair, not obviously falling apart) and put it in the back of the car.

The cushions were dirty, wet, and showing some wear. All in all, they grossed me out. I stood the chair in my garage, and in setting it down, it was clear to me that the sturdy frame was in very good condition.  I figured out how to remove the cushions, measured them, then hit eBay up for a funky fabric. I had a new project.

I found an upholsterer to fix the cushions up for a reasonable price, and I just beamed when it was ready. I really like this chair.

And oh! is it comfortable! It's a nice height. For a midcentury chair, it's very comfortable for anyone to sit in. Some MCM chairs are almost comically low. This was a chair designed to sit beside a desk or at a dining table. The broad, deep seat accommodates nearly every body's width and height. The arms are sturdy, and the feet stand very square on the floor, so even an elderly person who has some mobility issues can lean on this chair as she sits or rises.

The UNIVAC inventory sticker

The most curious thing I noticed about it right away, though, was the UNIVAC inventory sticker. That made me think for ten years that it was just some anonymous 1960s designer and manufacturer. Growing up in Aurora, IL, we had Lyon Metal and AllSteel Manufacturing, who made utilitarian items for workplaces. I've seen a lot of that sort of midcentury knockoff design. I noted this chair's untapered legs and spare ornamentation, and just figured it was something like an AllSteel chair, only made of wood.

Then last week, on a FaceBook Midcentury design group, someone posted an interior shot of a UNIVAC computer room (back when computers needed their own rooms), and I posted pictures of this chair. A comment suggested it "might be Risom" and I started a Google Image Search (GIS) for Risom armchairs and found an identical chair attributed to Jens Risom in the UK.  Well, that was good enough for me. 

Pay no attention to the mess in the background.

I noticed one of the times I had the chair upside-down that in the four corners of the underside, the braces have a maker's mark of a "B" inside a "G", inside a diamond. Huh. Who's that? I wondered. Back to Google. That led me to another conversation on designaddicts.com. While users there had posted some pictures of the mark, no one knew what it represented. We don't even know yet whether it says BG or GB.

Have I mentioned how much I love this chair?

However, user rtrindt had a chair just like mine (different fabric, of course). I said, "That's Risom" and provided the link to the UK site. User "leif erikson" said of my link, 'that's not definitive proof.' So we found some. User jkome found an old catalog of Risom's showroom with Knoll at Chicago's Merchandise Mart. In that picture, you can see a group of these chairs around a table. That's good, but it's not proof. 

Then another citation in jkome's next post shows several photos of a pair of these chairs. One of these photos is the paper tag on the underside, which state both "A Jens Risom Design" and "Risom Manufacturing Corp. North Grosvenordale, Conn." That proves it. This is a Jens Risom chair. Those two chairs in the 1stdibs posting are as described as teak, but I'm not so sure. Could be walnut, like mine.

Now to figure out who BG/GB is...

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2-14-16
I was watching Mad Men last night (the 2nd half of Season 7 was released recently on Netflix) when I saw two examples of this chair in a scene with Peggy. I was maybe a little too excited to have this validation about this chair, because, let's face it, Mad Men is largely a televised museum of MCM furnishings and textiles. Here's a screenshot. You can see the chairs with orange-red fabric behind Peggy as she walks off-camera.

A pair of Risom arm chairs (center) alongside the desks in Mad Men S7 E11.

Rehabbing a MCM light fixture

I rehabbed a birdcage light fixture this past week which I had bought this past summer at a garage sale. I was immediately drawn to the black metal and walnut veneer slats, the simple shapes of the white globe contrasting with the unadorned straight lines of the rest of the piece. Without any manufacturing marks at all, I'm guessing just by look that this is probably from the end of what we'd normally call MCM and into the "Mod" period: the latter half of the 1960s or maybe the 1970s. The wires are just spot welded to the metal rings, and the slats bolt to the rings with simple knurled thumbscrews and nuts. I'm sure this was never considered high design or made by a premier manufacturer. Let's call it a good example of "Midcentury Modest" which someone might buy at a department store or catalog. 

I was thinking I'd hang it over my kitchen sink when I bought it, but it didn't fit: the fixture is too wide to hang free from the electrical box in the ceiling, which is too close to the exterior wall. So I hung it from a nail in the garage and thought about it.

My house is old, and the windows are small. Not a lot of natural light enters most rooms, thanks to the shade of the large trees and the large eaves on the house. My bedroom sitting area has a tiny Ikea ceiling fixture, which doesn't put out a lot of light, especially when I'm trying to cue up a record and want to examine the surface. So I thought I'd hang this fixture near the turntable. Well, the slope of the roof/ceiling there didn't give me a good spot for it, so I wound up moving a lamp for the time being next to the turntable, and decided I'd hang this pendant near the chair. 

First thing to do was to clean it up. It was dusty when I bought it, and it surely didn't get any cleaner  while in the garage.

Here it is with the globe removed (left edge of photo).

Disassembled.

Wooden slats removed and ready for sanding.

The inside faces of the slats

I sanded them with 400 grit paper, then oiled them with Watco Danish Oil. The three on the left in this photo haven't been oiled yet, and the ones on the right have been. The wood really sprung back to life.

All the slats, showing the color that emerged when they were oiled.

Reassembled.

Hung over my Lane "First Edition" nightstand, which I uses as a little side table in my sitting area. The mirror is one of two that came with the set that I bought. That's the subject of another post.

Welcome

Thanks for visiting.

The title is ironic--I went on a few dates with a woman who described me as a "Suburban Hipster." I laugh at the title, but it's funny because it's true. I'm not a suburban version of a Portlandia episode, but yes, I do get fussy and prissy about a few things. This is the blog to see just what.

A short list of what I'm into currently: MCM furniture and housewares, my Victorian-era house, Alphonse Mucha, vinyl, vintage audio (1970's two-channel), Pyrex, FireKing, Glasbake, thrifting, flipping, and being a single dad. While not an exhaustive list, these are things that I put my energy into, where learning about these topics hits me in the soul. If that makes me a hipster, then I'll take the label proudly.