I'm just starting to get into mid century furniture. I found this chair at a thrift shop near St. Paul, Minnesota. It's been reupholstered at some point. The arms don't look like anything I've seen on mid century chairs so I'm wondering if someone threw on the legs when they were reupholstering. But the MINN. Instead of MN in the address leads me to believe that it was reupholstered prior to 1963. But I can't be certain. It also has a zipper that says "Falcon". I've only done a little research but it looks like Falcon zippers have been found on some mid century clothes.
Any ideas?
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The style is more traditional than mid-century modern. A lot of furniture companies did minor style updates in the 50s and 60s to their lines to give them a fresher look---like changing the legs to simple tapered ones. (Sometimes chairs like this were made with screw-on legs but often the legs were integral to the frame and it would be unusual for an upholsterer to cut them off and replace with screw-on legs. Most likely they are original.)
Determining the date of reupholstery by how the state is abbreviated is not a sure thing either. There was no law that said labels like this must conform to US Postal regs. Even mail was delivered for a long time---still is---with old abbreviations or the entire state name spelled out. Those labels are ordered in quantity and it could have taken many years to go through a big order of them before re-ordering.
Same goes for zippers---upholsterers buy them in bulk so the zipper could have been 10 years old or more when finally put into use. Sometimes upholsterers will reuse an old zipper since they get relatively little wear on a cushion cover (vs. on a pair of jeans, that is!)
But ultimately, the roll arms and the depth of the seat are the clues that this was not a new design in the late 50s to 1970-ish. Traditional furniture was still produced on a large scale all during that time because the new styles didn't appeal to everyone. That said, though---it's a pretty basic chair and could easily fit well with the more mod stuff of that era, if an eclectic look is ok with you. The fabric is the kind of thing found on a lot of bona fide mid-century designs---can't tell if it's wool, which would be great, or acrylic from the photos. If it's super comfortable and doesn't have a funky odor, then why not?
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