The really quite fantastic chair

A friend and I took a rather long drive to a car boot sale yesterday morning. It wasn't terribly busy or interesting, unfortunately, probably due to the weather still being a bit bleak and cold, but I found a couple little bits, a flower pot, some  cute salt shakers, a check shirt, but nothing so exciting it made it worth the long drive....until we spotted this lovely, well-kept arm chair. It was exactly the kind of thing that Mark and I had discussed putting in his little library nook in the livingroom - it could do with a chair but the space is not very deep so it couldn't be anything big and upholstered.

I knew from looking at it that it was most likely an Ercol - a wonderful longstanding british make that I seem to be finding a lot since moving to Wales, and it certainly was the kind of mid-century style that I love. I also knew that the stall was one of those proffesional ones with only a few big pieces on a tarpaulin, so they would know what they were selling and surely be priced thereafter. But we asked, just in case. We made the lady repeat what she said as we didn't quite believe our ears. Fifteen pounds. Fifteen teensy pounds for that beautiful Ercol chair and it was going to be all mine!

 

So here it is, being put through rigorous quality testing in situ:

 And here is something you really don't see every day: my other half, getting animated about fabric choices for what is apparently now his chair. This mostly only happens when he is trying to prevent me from bringing more "bile green patterened things" into our decor, and he seems to have plumped for a patchwork of indigo fabrics with a Japanese sashiko back cushion, and decided to keep the dark wood stain as it is - our usual default setting is to strip everything back to bare wood, but I guess keeping it dark gives it a certainly manly library charm.