We are excited to announce that Florrie + Bill have collaborated with multi-award winning wallpaper and textiles designer, Abigail Borg, to unveil the ‘Botanical Collection’ – a range of vintage cocktail chairs characterised by beautiful, illustrative botanical fabrics.
The collection will officially launch on 2nd March 2015.
For further details or for press enquiries please contact fiona@peachypr.co.uk.
Navy is a hot interior trend right now, so what better way to add it to your home with this deep inky blue velvet chair?
Image below shows the ‘before’ look
Restored by Florrie+Bill, this vintage Danish cocktail armchair has been newly recovered in Designers Guild Cassia velvet in colour ‘Ink’. Cassia is a luxurious, richly coloured matt velvet, and in this deep blue looks simply beautiful paired with the light colour show wood arms and classic tapered legs. All the woodwork was professionally restored by Neil at Melbourne Hall French Polishers.
The chair has been fully restored, and has a solid hardwood frame. It also has a full coil sprung seat cage, topped with new horsehair stuffing for superior comfort.
This is a stunning accent chair, which would look great in any mid-century inspired interior. It measures H: 76cm x W: 66cm x D: 72cm Seat Height: 43cm, and is for sale at £725 over at Florrie+Bill.
I’m thrilled to announce that my restored vintage cocktail chairs which I have launched in collaboration with Flock are now available to purchase online.
A collection of vintage 1950’s Danish cocktail chairs have been recovered in fabrics from the Flock range. Flock work with recent graduate surface designers to create beautiful textiles for interiors, and the designers get to keep their name to their designs – receiving a royalty for every metre of fabric sold. Their collections are carefully curated, with a focus on geometry and colour, printing all of the designs digitally in the UK on 100% linens or sumptuous velvets.
Each vintage chair has been fully stripped back to the hardwood frame and coil sprung seat and completely restored. They have been professionally reupholstered by my Long Eaton based upholsterer – using a mix of traditional and modern techniques. They include horsehair stuffed seats with new webbing and foams to the curved backs to provide superior comfort and support.
There are a few chairs available in stock to purchase now with an immediate delivery. Once out of stock they can be pre-ordered, and will be restored and delivered within a 4 – 6 week lead-time.
Below are images of the range available. Thanks to Holly Booth for the photography.
A collection of scatter cushions will be launching on the Florrie+Bill website soon.
Earlier this month we restored this fabulous retro Danish armchair. I fell in love with the simple, clean design of this chair, and the slightly curved arms are so stylish. This chair was covered in a bespoke choice of fabric by the client, and will be going into a home design studio.
It was fully stripped and the wood frame removed from the seat and back. The woodwork had a lovely patina, and was requested to be left looking ‘vintage’ – so we just brightened it up a little using Danish oil. New webbing and foam was added to provide superior comfort as the original webbing and foams had disintegrated. A lovely new dome shape was created on the seat. The chair was newly upholstered in Villa Nova’s Geneva Vintage cotton-linen in the Caraway colour. Its laid back, washed effect texture suits the simple style of this armchair.
Such a transformation – here is a picture of the chair before our restoration. As you can see the original fabric, although quite lovely, was unfortunately dirty and worn.
Now its fully restored its looking perfect… And it makes such a great chair to use for taking photographs of cushions!
Cushions shown are from a selection of Flock fabrics cushions coming soon at Florrie+Bill.
What do you get when you take a curvy little vintage cocktail chair and throw the fabulous Flock fabrics into the mix? Something quite spectacular!
Florrie + Bill is launching a range of restored and reupholstered vintage 1950’s Danish cocktail chairs in collaboration with Flock fabrics. Flock showcases colourful and geometric fabrics with designs by Cerys Ackland, Lucy Rainbow, Angela Johnston and Rachel Parker. All are recent graduate designers who are provided with a rare platform to showcase their talent. All the designers get to keep their name to their work and receive a royalty for every metre of fabric sold. All fabrics are digitally printed or screen printed by hand in the UK.
More information and photographs will be released early next week, with the chairs available for pre-order on the website. For now, here are a few teaser photos! For press enquiries please email amy@florrieandbill.com.
Earlier this year, a client in Aberdeen contacted me about the 18 vintage Esavian stacking chairs I had available for bespoke recover. The client was opening a new cafe and wanted something with a vintage feel to them.
These chairs were originally designed for Esavian (the Educational Supply Association) by British designer James W Leonard, and they were produced around 1949. ESA produced low cost, quality furniture for schools. These particular chairs have a cast aluminium frame, with upholstered chair seats and back rests. These chairs are adult size, and were still covered in the original tatty yellow and orange vinyl when I purchased them.
The client wanted the chairs to be covered in a leather similar to the original yellow vinyl. I sourced the yellow leather, and posted out the swatches to the client. I then got asked to source and send a couple of other complementary colours too. So I sent a blue and a green colour which was available in the same leather range. The client decided that in fact he loved all three colours I had sent, so he choose to have each colour on six chairs!
This project was a lengthy one! As there were 18 chairs in total, it seemed to take forever to get them finished! But it was a project I immensely enjoyed as the transformation was beautiful. The chairs had originally come from another cafe, and were very dirty and greasy. After removing each seat and backrest, every aluminium chair frame was thoroughly and gently cleaned with a detergent degreaser, and buffed back up. Each seat pad and back rest was stripped of the old vinyl (rusty staples galore!!!) and finally recovered in the new leather, with the addition of new foam.
The original protector feet, which were inserted into the leg frames were certainly showing signs of wear – as you’d expect from something nearly 65 years old! The original feet appeared to be made from a nylon type material, so I contacted a local plastics moulding company, Markfield Plastics in Bagworth, Leicestershire about getting some replacements made. The manager, Gary, was a star and painstakingly hand-machined all 18 sets of feet – and the end results were excellent. We were then able to add the new feet to ensure there were no wobbles or nasty scrapes to the floor when used in the cafe.
The old nylon feet above
The new nylon feet above
I was so pleased to see all the chairs finally come together before they were packaged up ready for transport. What a beautiful set of bespoke cafe chairs! They look so proud, and its hard to believe these are the same dirty, worn out chairs I first started with! I can’t wait to see a picture of them in situ when the cafe opens.
Origami Garland from Origami-Est
If you are interested in vintage or retro chairs for your cafe, bar or restaurant – please contact me and I will be happy to help source and restore chairs to your own requirements.
A couple of months ago, a gentleman contacted me about purchasing a vintage G Plan 6250 swivel chair in a bespoke cover. He was a friend of the new owners of the grey G Plan chair I restored a while ago. He told me that he thought the chair was so comfortable and beautiful, that he too wanted to purchase ‘the’ chair – also as a surprise for his wife’s 40th birthday. What a lucky lady!
I already had the chair in stock awaiting to be recovered, so that worked out as perfect timing!
As this chair was for a present, I made up a gift card with a picture of the chair on, so that husband could present it to his wife on her birthday. I was also sent a picture of the room where the chair was going, along with a photo of their curtains. I picked out the neutral tones, and made some leather swatches up reflecting those colours so that they could choose the leather.
As you can imagine the present went down really well with the wife! After some thought it was decided that the chair was to be covered in full leather, in a parchment colour, which picked out the colour in the curtain design. They wanted to keep it plain so it would sit well with any future redecoration projects.
As ever, after transformation this chair looked stunning. The leather colour looked great on this style of chair, and seemed to enhance the curves of the wings and buttoning beautifully.
The new owners were really happy with their new chair and it looked lovely in its new home.
If you would like to own a vintage G Plan 6250 swivel chair and choose your own fabric or leather, then please get in touch. We can source a chair for you and help with the design of your bespoke chair. We now also SHIP WORLDWIDE!
Last week I received my delivery of vintage Danish cocktail chairs. I was really excited to finally get them as I’d been coveting these for a while! I have imported an initial selection of chairs from Europe, and I haven’t been disappointed.
These 1950’s cocktail chairs have long tapered legs, and curved, low backs which make them really comfortable – it almost feels like they are giving your back a hug! They are smaller chairs, but big on appeal – and would make a real statement piece covered in either a brightly coloured plain fabric or a pattern.
I will be fully restoring and reupholstering a small selection to sell online, and there will also be a ‘Limited Edition’ collection launched in collaboration with a fabulous UK Textile Designer (more about that soon!).
I am also offering these chairs on a bespoke basis – so a client can choose the chair and select their own fabric to go on it. What better way to add a personalised vintage accent chair into your interior. Take a look at my Pinterest board for ideas on how to style a vintage cocktail chair.
These vintage cocktail chairs would also be the perfect addition to hotel rooms, bar areas or cafes. They can be covered in a bespoke contract grade fabric, and larger volumes can be sourced. They would look equally as good in small groups as they would on their own in a hotel room.
I am also selling some of these chairs as they are for reupholstery purposes by other individuals – so they are ideal for upholstery students to use as projects on upholstery courses in the UK.
I really hope you enjoy looking at Danish cocktail chairs just as much I do! It would be great to hear what you think about them by leaving a comment below! Further information can also be found over on the website.
Over the last few weeks I have been working on another vintage G Plan 6250 swivel chair and footstool. The enquiry came to me via my Etsy store. The customer had seen the black chair we did earlier in the year and requested the same chair in a deep red leather.
At the time I didn’t have a G Plan chair in stock, but luckily I was able to source one in good condition within a week. I prepared some red leather samples in varying shades and sent these out to the customer. Upon receiving the samples, the customer decided to use a mid-tone red leather, called Bordeaux.
When I received the G Plan chair into stock it was covered in the original brown dralon and also had the original G Plan label attached to the seat platform. The chair was in average condition for its age with the base in good condition, but the castors, although functional, were showing slight signs of wear.
Once the frame was stripped, it went off to the workshop to begin its transformation. When the chosen leather was delivered, there was a problem with the quality of one of the hides. There were a couple of holes in one of the pieces (which isn’t unusual as natural scars are cut out of the hides) but as we were cutting such large pieces, this hide was not suitable. I had to return this hide and a new one was promptly sent back out. This delayed the project a little but couldn’t be helped.
The chair frame required new webbing, wadding, and a new foam seat cushion. Once the chair was reupholstered in the soft red leather, it looked out of this world! The colour suited the style of the chair and complimented the dark show wood perfectly.
A few weeks into the initial order I had the opportunity to buy another of the matching 6251 footstools. I contacted my customer to see if she would also like to purchase this and have it covered in the same red leather. She decided she would love to have the matching stool, so this was secured and delivered to me.
When I took delivery of the footstool I realised that the wooden base was a lighter colour than the base of the chair. So, off it went to Neil my local french polisher to darken it down! Neil came to the conclusion that the base had originally been lightened in the past. When he took the chrome support off, there were remnants of old masking tape, and the original dark colour varnish was underneath!
I was really pleased with this project and my customer was a real pleasure to deal with from start to finish.
My customer was also delighted with the result once it was delivered and unpacked. She sent me this kind message:
”We are OVERJOYED with our beautiful new chair and footstool. It is absolutely wonderful to sit in something that is so very comfortable and it fits into its new home absolutely perfectly”. – C.W + family, Surrey
If you think this project is pretty cool and want your own G Plan swivel chair to relax in, then I’ve recently had another 6250 swivel chair and footstool come into stock which is now available to pre-order. Please contact me to discuss further!
Apologies for the lack of blog updates over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been super busy working on custom chair orders, which is great, but as most of them are ‘secrets’ until they are actually finished I can’t update you with progress as I go along. Booooo!
I can, however, now show you something that was collected last week. Last month I had the opportunity to restore another (yes, another) vintage G Plan 6251 footstool to match a 6250 swivel chair I did at the end of last year. A nice man purchased this chair for his wife as a present for her 40th birthday (how lovely!). He loved the chair so much he then decided to order a matching footstool to compliment her chair.
I sourced a suitable vintage G Plan footstool and recovered it in a vintage effect grey leather and the Tamasyn Gambell ‘Textured Stripe’ geometric linen to match the chair. It looked amazing when finished. I am hoping to get a photo of the two together! I heard they also ordered the matching Tamasyn Gambell lampshade too!
What’s in the box….?
FLORRIE+BILL 
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