The police uniform wingback chair

Customer Lindsay Yates brought us her late father’s wingback armchair, along with his service uniforms from his nearly-three-decade career with Greater Manchester Police. The frame was sound but the cover was finished. She asked whether we could cover the chair in the wool from the uniforms – and whether we could keep the things on the uniforms that mattered: the sergeant’s stripes, the epaulettes, the badge number.

We could. That is reupholstery and rejuvenation with a one-off layout problem on top, closer in spirit to film, TV and production set work or a brief from interior designers and specifiers than a standard domestic recover. The challenge was metreage: police uniform jackets aren’t cut for upholstery. You have to piece around the seams, lapels, pockets and brass buttons, and you only get one go at the layout. We laid every jacket flat, mapped the chair’s panels onto the largest clean sections of fabric, and cut to the seams that worked – placing the sergeant’s stripes, the epaulettes and the badge number onto the panels where they would still read.

In the words of the Guild of Master Craftsmen feature: “Key features of the uniform, including the sergeant’s stripes, epaulettes and badge number, were thoughtfully incorporated into the design, ensuring that the finished piece retained its identity and significance.”

The chair came back rebuilt frame-up, sprung in the traditional manner, finished with a brass-headed nail trim along the front rail – proper repairs and restoration underneath the memory piece. It’s the kind of work that doesn’t pay particularly well by the metre but matters enormously to the family it goes back to. More finished pieces sit in the gallery and on home upholstery.

If you have a sentimental piece, a set brief or an unusual fabric source, send photos via a home quote and we will tell you honestly what is possible before any wool is cut.