misty-eyed

 

I found this chair several years ago at the tip and bought it for a fiver. It needed a lot of sorting out but it was already clear that it was a gem. When I took the rotten padded seat out of it I discovered amongst the horse-hair stuffing a cheap fake-gold necklace. Odd that it was tucked away in there when it clearly wasn't valuable, and there's no way it just drifted there by accident: it was absolutely placed with intent.

After some investigation I found out that it was an old sea captain's chair - it rolls back on it's axis (rather squeakily) and would have been used in a ship's bridge.

This weekend when I removed the sheepskin on it to give it a dust, I discovered that it was covered in salt. The marks all over it looked like the trails of tears. Very mysterious. I've oiled it now, so we'll see what happens next.