A working upholstery notebook, dated 1962 on the inside cover, kept alongside a set of pinned fabric swatches. It is the least decorative object in the archive and one of the most useful.
A record of jobs, not ideas
The entries are short and repetitive. A piece, a measurement, a quantity of material, a note on what was found once the covering came off. There is no commentary and nothing that reads as opinion.
Much of the handwriting is difficult, and several entries use abbreviations that are no longer obvious. Where a reading is uncertain it has been left as uncertain rather than guessed at.
What the quantities show
The fabric quantities recorded against each piece are consistently higher than a modern calculation would suggest. Some of that is pattern matching, and some is simply the assumption that there would be a second attempt.
Several entries note the reuse of existing stuffing, which was normal practice and is now unusual. The materials were the expensive part of the job, and the labour was comparatively cheap. That ratio has since reversed entirely, which explains most of what has happened to the trade.
Britannica’s history of upholstery gives the background. Seats and cushions were padded with materials such as goose down and horsehair, and the 20th century brought molded sponge rubber, synthetic fibres and new covering materials. A notebook dated 1962 falls inside that change.
The swatches
The pinned samples have faded unevenly, and the edges protected by the pin are noticeably stronger in colour than the exposed cloth. They are a useful reminder of how far textiles shift over sixty years.
The palette that survives is muted green, dull russet and a flat cream. Whether that is what was chosen, or simply what is left of it, is impossible to say from the samples alone.
Why the upholstery notebook was kept
Notebooks like this were working tools and were normally discarded when full. This one survived by accident rather than intention, which is true of most of the archive.
Its value is that it records ordinary work at an ordinary standard, which is precisely the thing that published sources almost never preserve.
Part of the Complete Guide Buying Vintage Furniture: A Complete Guide Read the full guide →
