Folke Ohlsson Lounge Chair & Ottoman

When this chair arrived, it had every appearance of having been abused by feral cats and then thrown from a third-story window. Apart from the external teak frame and hardware, almost no part of the chair was salvageable. Fortunately, the owner paid an appropriate price ($0 on their local Buy Nothing group.)

We completely disassembled the chair and removed two layers of upholstery as well as the original batting, foam rubber, and webbing. The ottoman’s plywood frame had severe water damage, so we used it as a pattern to make a new frame from 3/4″ Baltic birch plywood. The seat’s beech frame was badly damaged and appeared to have been poorly repaired on several occasions. About 50% of the seat frame was recoverable so we remade the remaining 50% from new beech, being careful to replicate the original finger and lap joints.

The original head-rest cushion was missing, so we reproduced it based on images found in research.

This chair features a spring-loaded tilt mechanism for the seat and a raising/lowering mechanism for the ottoman to provide adjustable seating position. Made from formed steel, the hardware was largely salvageable, so we performed rust removal, polishing, and replaced broken springs.

Although the teak external parts were mostly intact, they’d never been cared for and several of the glued joints had opened up. We completely disassembled those parts using steam, clamps, and lots of wiggling.

Once apart, we stripped the original finish with acetone and a card scraper to remove as little original wood as possible. Then we cleaned all the parts, prepped and re-glued the joints with resorcinol (good for teak) and, finally, finished the reassembled parts with multiple coats of a tradition Danish teak oil.

For upholstery we used a period-correct black-and-white, 100% wool “tweed” from Maharam.