Andrew Kay: Seat of the matter

Are you sitting pretty or sitting comfortably?

Has anyone else watched that brand new comedy on TV? The one called Your Home In Their Hands? Oh my, how I laughed. But how welcome this kind of sit-com is. What do you mean? It’s not a sit-com? Oh come on now, it has to be surely.

It’s years since Changing Rooms changed the face of Britain with its makeovers. It resulted in an MDF boom and a surge in the sales of bright purple emulsion and leopard print furnishing fabric.

It gave everyone license to ruin their home and deplete its market potential, and almost single-handedly destroyed any credibility that interior designers ever had.

Across the country, people started to give their gran’s utility furniture a coat of paint and then ‘distress’ it to achieve that oh-so-fashionable shabby chic look. Well, shabby, maybe … but to my mind seldom chic.

It also gave rise to the transient nature of current furniture shopping. Thirty years ago, a sofa or dining table and chairs was a major and long-term decision and investment. You bought them to last, as simple as that. Now we buy on a nod from the marketeers and fashion pundits that tell us that this year’s colour is ‘Positano Pink’ or ‘Autumn Aubergine’. This is, of course, rather sad, as within a year those same marketeers, or should I call them racketeers, will be pushing ‘Persistant Puce’ and ‘Violent Veridian’. In turn, those who fell for the line will be caught with their soft furnishings down.

Thirty years ago you seldom saw a sofa in a skip, now every skip looks like a local branch of Ikea or World Of Leather, so quickly do we dispose of our unfashionable furnishings.

I bought a sofa a few years back from what was meant to be a reputable company, now gone. It started to fall apart, depsite being rather expensive, within weeks of it arriving. I still have it, but it is less than comfortable and the sight of it makes me cross. Of course it will have to go but what do I replace it with? I’m certainly not going to buy on whim, or for fashion. I want it to be comfortable, practical and timeless. I want it to last for years and years and look as good then as it does when it first arrives.

I think I’d like an armchair too, a big comfy one to curl up in. I confess that I did get rather hooked on one of my mother’s electric recliners on my last visit, despite it looking like part of the carcass of a dead hippopotomus.

You can call it what you like; vintage, 20th century modern … I call it ‘quality’

My home style is defined by the beautiful objects that I have collected over the years and by some rather fine second-hand furniture that has a timeless quality. Three cheers for Ercol
and for Ladderax. Hoorah for G Plan too, which is certainly standing the test of time.
You can call it what you like; vintage, 20th century modern …

I call it ‘quality’, and as far as I am concerned you can keep the rest.

As for Your Home In Their Hands, it really is must-see comedy of the very finest kind, on a par with The Good Life and Butterflies – the English at their very silliest. I cannot wait to see what horrors they conjure up next time in the name of design.

Pic: ercol Evergreen Easy Chair, ercol.com

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