Connecting with the past

I assume that most people aqure a dining room set by purchasing one. Our dining room furniture has come into our lives in stages. When my husband moved into our apartment in 1978, there was a pretty 1930's  mahogany chair that was left by the previous tenant. That's the chair my husband sit in at the nead of the table. Two sturdy 1940's maple chairs arrived from a friend after she and her husband split up.

Our   1922 mahogany table and china cabinet came from Uncle Irving's girlfriend Mary's parent's home, after Mary died. ( I know, a complicated thread of relationship. ) Four of our chairs were found on the street. 

One of the chairs helped me to teach the legal concept of hefker  to my youngest. We were walking to his bus stop in the morning when I found  a lovely late '40's kitchen chair on the curb. I picked it up and took it with us to the bus stop. My son reprimanded me. Wasn't that stealing??? I explained to him that it was hefker, by putting it out on the curb the owner renounced ownership and the chair could be claimed by anyone.  We needed another chair, so I claimed it.

One of my favorites in our dining room collection is a 1910 oak chair I purchased for $5 at our local thrift store.

The other day, I found  this beautiful Victorian chair on Craigslist. It was $10. My kids were nice enough to go across town to pick it up. I cleaned it up and did some minor repairs. At some point I will need to replace the wicker seat.

The seat is also a bit short for our table, so I asked my daughter to buy a round pillow to both hide the imperfect wicker and to raise  the seat to a comfortable dining level.. My daughter found one. I made a quick pillow cover...and we now have another addition to our table..

I made the cushion cover by sewing a tube and securing the centers with rubber bands. I will eventually make a more permanent cover, but this worked for dinner.


One would think that the mix of chairs around our dining room table would look like  a jumble. Instead the chairs seem to be an inanimate version of  of our Friday night dinners where we have a wide array of people sitting sround the table and all conversing happily with one another.