End of year sale on Chairish

Save 25% in my Chairish shop is coming! Check out between Monday Dec 30th and Thursday Jan 2nd. I have never offered this big of a discount here so please take advantage of that and add something awesome to your home! Chairish will arrange shipping on large items and you can get an instant quote right on the page. Generally speaking, their shipping prices cannot be beat! If you need help, reach out.

What’s next for 2025? I want to continue to sell off my existing inventory and downsize. At this time, I am probably not going to be buying. Last year was hard. The market is just awful and I cannot continue to support downsizing families if I can’t sell things let alone sell enough to make a profit. I will consider all offers for anything I have right now but keep in mind, you’ll need to come get the item. I cannot provide full services at discount prices.

When the weather starts to warm up come spring, I will plan another purge day at the flea market. Shop my booth while I still have a nice selection of lighting, art and some interesting small furniture items.

Have a safe and joyous holiday season! Thank you for your support over the years and please remind all to shop small and support your local businesses as they try to keep afloat during these trying times. I will continue to service my markets until I have made significant progress on my inventory reduction and stay tuned for flash sales! Please reach out if I can assist you with anything!

XO MALISSA

Local pick up deals- I need to park my car in the garage this winter and would love to move these great high end pieces. Beautiful Founders walnut 12 drawer dresser and Directional Milo Baughman cube end table! Both offered at a low price got local pick up. Message me to plan your pick up!

Holiday updates

As we roll into the holidays I want to do a quick update.

Winter hours are now in effect at my booth at Fleetwood Antique Mall. Open 10-5 WED-SUN. I have lots of vintage smalls and new items like fun kitchen towels, incense and more. Holiday items are out. Pop in and help me try to beat my rent for the year. I still have a way to go and for the first time since I have been here, I may not break even. It’s truly been a very depressing year for me in not just one market but all.

Online, you will find my Etsy shop with sales on select items through the end of the month. I do not want to encourage furniture sales so I did not want to mark them down. Still getting used to my new job so not wanting to deal with looking for shippers etc.

My Chairish shop is 20% off for just a few more days (check out by Nov 29th at 11:59pm). If you need shipping, head there for an instant quote nationwide! They really do have decent rates and prob better than I could get myself. It’s white glove so you can tell them to put it over there. They do all the arranging for us.

My website is available for local pick up purchases. I can meet for smaller items, however, I am driving a subcompact these days so my larger items have to be picked up at my home in Fleetwood. I will have them all cleaned, waxed and ready to load when you arrive and assist in loading.

I have some very nice items left and at this time, probably will not be investing in much more as honestly, I have not sold any furniture in months and between the economy and lack of interest, I am just hoping to find homes for what I have and get some of this out of my home so I can stop worrying about it and reclaim my space. I am open to discussion on things if you want to make a bundle offer for multiple pieces. Oh and don’t forget to check out my pillows and other goods I made. I seriously would create more but since there has not been much interest in them thus far, I am not spending more time on it.

Thanks for your past support and referrals. It saddens me that I could not keep this going at the level I had built it up to but times are changing and although I have branched out into textiles and other types of things, it’s just not enough to make it worth it. If things continue on the downslide I may consider leaving my booth in the spring. We will see.

May you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving and holiday season! Reach out if I can help you with anything!

XO Malissa

Japanese Postmodernism deep dive

No country was without a postmodernism movement and today, we are looking into a Japanese designed and manufactured folding chair. At first glance, it represents the standard directors chair look. I instantly knew it had to collapse. It took a second, but I figured it out. By pulling up on the chair, the tubes began to slide and the sides started to come together as it collapsed. It’s a cool design that allows the chair to fold flat height-wise and can be tucked into a closet in seconds. The tubular chrome structure is not uncommon as many of the postmodernists enjoyed working with it. This chair was designed to be mass produced.

There is a cool patented feature which tells us more about the way the seat upholstery attaches. Let’s deep dive! My chair is missing it’s label, but it did not take long to find a labelled version on web archives.

The tag only states: utida x chair, made in japan

This chair gets attributed to Shigeru Uchida. I deep dove and found a patent for the way the seat attaches to the frame! It is dated 1974 (USA patent anyway). Note that the patent is for inventors listed Suekichi Uchida and Aza Gonishi and associated company is Uchida Sharyo Co. Inc. of Nagoya-shi, Japan. Here’s a look at the patent.

Note the ‘inventors’ and company listed.

A second search took me to the patent for this chair!

PATENT FOR THE X CHAIR!

So Shigeru Uchida. I have found no ties to him and Suekichi at this point. No bio mentions a spouse (assuming Suekichi is female). His known designs are quite sleek and definitely look more high end than this chair. I did find another folding chair tagged the X-7 Uchida Syaryo Made in Japan. I assume this is same company noted in patent. I do believe like any foreign language, the translation gets muddled! Here’s look at the chair which folds differently but has a similar tubular construction. It does not have a seat attached like the above patent.

X-7 Chair - thanks to etsy seller for pics.

I’ll add a few more patents from Suekichi as these chairs turn up as well and figure I’d put them here for the researchers who find me.

And here is the Z chair in the wild (thanks bay seller!), this iteration does not have the detachable rocker pieces.

We can conclude that the UCHIDA Z Chair tag is Suekichi Uchida!

Also note, another name that gets tagged with Uchida is Takeshi Nii. At no point have I found any link to this company or to Suekichi Uchida! Nii also helped design a chair around 1970 called the Nychair X and it looks similar so you need to look very closely at the details to identify. Nychair’s are still being made and can be bought new. I also am adding one patent I found for Takeshi Nii for a similar folding chair with a director chair look which shows company info, etc and pic of the chair on the Nychair website.

And what about Shigeru? Well here is a look at a chair by him and it’s night and day! This guy was HIGH END and not utilitarian! Have a look at this sexy chair! Also note there is much more to Shigeru than chairs! Look him up as there is info on him available. Thanks for checking out my ramblings!

My friend just said to me, why do you waste your time on the blog? I said, spreading facts and info and putting it out there in the cyber world makes me happy. There are so many dealers adding to the misinformation that even if one person finds my blog and sees the errors in their false attributions, I have done good in the world. ;). THANKS SO MUCH for tuning in! XO Malissa