Furniture

It began as a series of ad hoc rescue missions: Andrea Mihalik would spot furniture languishing on curbs during her morning jogs around Haddonfield, and end up lugging the underappreciated specimens back to her garage. Mihalik, 48, didn't know it at the time, but the collection of living-room rejects rapidly crowding the family cars out of their parking spots would soon launch her into a new career. As she would put it, the chairs just hadn't spoken to her yet. Nearly a decade later, those salvaged finds are the basis for Mihalik's one-woman company, Wild Chairy, which turns family heirlooms and garage-sale gems into "art chairs" - one-of-a-kind pieces that merge old-school upholstery techniques with a high-fashion sensibility, while integrating materials not found in (or anywhere near)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - We are experiencing a demand today for the designs of midcentury American furniture, when America was in a period of design excellence and innovation, but the question of what to buy has become more confusing to the consumer. Can I buy an original? Should I buy vintage or new? What is the difference between an authentic piece and a reproduction? As a designer, and someone who supports authentic design, I will try to clarify some of the confusion around these questions.

Fine furniture collectors take note: Common Pleas Classic - with its spartan style and costly political veneer - could be headed for investment stardom. There won't be a gala unveiling of the '92 models because the court's mill shop has been shut down. No longer will patronage workers, paid about $500,000 a year in salary and benefits, churn out bookcases and desks, credenzas and tables. Appreciation, therefore, should be the watchword - particularly for taxpayers who were paying for a mill whose supervisors had no idea how much it cost to build furniture for judges and court bureaucrats.

Everything goes when it comes to furniture these days. But within that umbrella of freedom, some trends were noticeable at the fall furniture market: Bamboo, wicker and rattan were everywhere, at all price ranges. Used in a limited way - as a side table or chair - these popular, casual materials can tone down an otherwise formal room or provide a touch of the tropics. They also can be used as main furniture pieces, to create chic, comfortable rooms. Material mixing was rampant.

Joe L'Erario and Ed Feldman, those two goofs from the neighborhood, are back fixing furniture on Channel 12. The sophomore season of their Furniture on the Mend got off to an abortive start last week when somebody broadcast the fourth episode in place of the first one. Baffled viewers came in on Part 4 of a reupholstering and refinishing project. No, it wasn't just another On the Mend joke. These characters - Feldman grew up in the Northeast, L'Erario in South Philly - will joke about anything, but as craftsmen and furniture experts, they take pains to make their projects understandable.

At the moment, the ornate side chair is occupying center stage in a two-car garage densely furnished with woodworking equipment and thickly carpeted with sawdust and shavings. At the moment, it is also occupying center stage in the lives of Wright Horne and his wife, Virginia Davis, two refugees from the white-collar world who traded regular paychecks for the fiscal ambiguities of custom furniture making. The Bucks County couple isn't yet quite sure what to do about this costly Colonial Williamsburg reproduction of a mid-18th-century Philadelphia piece.

A group of very rich collectors has pushed prices for 18th-century American furniture to levels that far exceed the prices garnered by furniture made in any other country or any other time. In January in New York, record prices were paid for five forms of Colonial furniture made in Philadelphia. At Christie's on Jan. 20, a small pier table, 35 1/2 inches wide, sold for $4.62 million; a tilt-top tea table for $1.21 million; a side chair for $418,000; a mirror for $242,000, and a fire screen for $66,000.

When Joanne and George Baltaeff were getting married three years ago, they decided that celebrating their new life together called for moving out of old homes and making a new one. The house-hunting began one snowy afternoon, when Joanne made arrangements with a Realtor to see six properties for sale. It ended about 20 minutes later, when she fell in love with the first one, a three-bedroom/three-bath house on a quiet street in Springfield, Delaware County. "I was working a lot, and she was saying we should find a house," George says.

Visitors to Chicago this summer will be delighted to find the city indulging again in its tradition of whimsical public art - sidewalks and plazas are being adorned with hundreds of pieces of furniture decorated under the theme "Suite Home Chicago. " More than 150 area artists were enlisted to paint and otherwise embellish life-size fiberglass sofas, easy chairs, ottomans, TVs, and dressers that delight the eye and beckon to children and adults alike. The installations began earlier this month, and the suites along Michigan Avenue's Magnificent Mile of tony shops already are alive with people stopping to consider, admire, crawl on, and pose for photographs with the works.

Two auctions will offer fine furniture and fine art with a difference: The furniture is for cozy quarters; the art is "museum quality" acrylic. Generally speaking, acrylics do not have the tony reputation of oils or even water colors, but nine pieces that Ted Wiederseim will be offering next Friday in Lionville will be familiar to readers of Scientific American and other magazines. They are illustrations by Rudolf Freund, a native of Philadelphia who died in 1969. They include an illustration of an archaeopteryx, the Jurassic Era creature important to evolutionists because it was the first known flying reptile to have feathers.

JULIE Margaret Van Sciver seemed to thrive on high-risk adventure. Meg, as she was known to family and friends, left Philadelphia's cloistered atmosphere of private schools, benefits, horse shows and social climbing to pursue often risky adventures in many corners of the globe. On May 12, she was paragliding over Lookout Mountain in Colorado when she fell 40 feet. Emergency personnel took her off the mountain that afternoon, and she was taken to St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colo.

  The Yorkshire Alliance Home and Garden Tour takes place from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Rain date is May 19. Tickets can be purchased at the Antiques Emporium, 424 High Street, 609-747-8333, and at Phillip's Furniture, 307 High Street, 609-386-7125. Price: $20 per person.

It began as a series of ad hoc rescue missions: Andrea Mihalik would spot furniture languishing on curbs during her morning jogs around Haddonfield, and end up lugging the underappreciated specimens back to her garage. Mihalik, 48, didn't know it at the time, but the collection of living-room rejects rapidly crowding the family cars out of their parking spots would soon launch her into a new career. As she would put it, the chairs just hadn't spoken to her yet. Nearly a decade later, those salvaged finds are the basis for Mihalik's one-woman company, Wild Chairy, which turns family heirlooms and garage-sale gems into "art chairs" - one-of-a-kind pieces that merge old-school upholstery techniques with a high-fashion sensibility, while integrating materials not found in (or anywhere near)

D EAR HARRY: I bought some very expensive furniture back in 2006. There was a special deal on the sale that allowed me to pay for it over a two-year period. When the time came for the last payment, I raised a question as to the calculation of interest. The issue never got resolved, so I did not make that last payment. Today, I got a notice from a collection agency with all kinds of threats of action to collect that payment plus a bunch of extra charges. I called them, expecting to get a tough-speaking guy with a booming voice.

Intrigued by the drama and inspired by the sophistication of British aristocrats in Downton Abbey , some fans are plotting to bring the series' style into their own homes, from gilded finishes to opulent upholstery to portrait paintings. "We've gone so casual in the last decade in terms of home decor. I think there is a desire to be a little more formal, or a little more glamorous," says Kristie Barnett, an interior design blogger in Nashville, Tenn. "That doesn't mean it can't be family-friendly.

Leonard B. Marschark calls himself "a traditional artisan in a contemporary show," which is no understatement. He builds reproductions of 18th-century clocks, which he'll exhibit and sell at the Philadelphia Invitational Furniture Show on April 5 to 7 at the 23d Street Armory in Center City. "I'm doing things the way they were done 200 years ago. I'm the exception to this crowd," he says of the eclectic mix of contemporary furniture makers, glass artists, potters, weavers, quilters, and others who will join him. Since Josh Markel and Bob Ingram launched the first show in 1995, the event has ebbed and flowed, depending on the economy, consumer tastes and social trends.

City Council sees dollar signs on publicly-owned property. Sound familiar? Council President Darrell Clarke introduced legislation more than a year ago to authorize digital ads on city-owned property and he plans to reintroduce the bill Thursday. "I think it's very important, as I have said time after time to create revenue opportunities for the city, thereby the citizens, other than sticking our hands into the citizens' pockets and increasing taxes," said Clarke. A consultant for Council said the city could generate $8 million from advertising on public buildings, bus shelters, trash trucks or receptacles.

Freeman's will offer decorative items to please the idle eye and the fluttering heart at two sales two weeks apart: English and continental furniture and decorative arts on Tuesday, with such necessities as walking canes and page turners, and then on Feb. 12, two days before Valentine's Day, more than 360 lots of jewelry and watches. Both sales promise to be comparatively affordable. Tuesday's 550-lot sale of English, continental, and decorative items will begin at 10 a.m. at the gallery at 1808 Chestnut St. with a half dozen lots of Welsh and William and Mary furniture from the 18th and early 19th centuries, notably a George II walnut secretary bookcase expected to bring $5,000 to $7,000, according to the auction catalog (also accessible at www.freemansauction.com )

Briggs Auction will precede its regular Friday-evening sale this week with a special afternoon session devoted to a single-owner collection of military items. It is one of several sales over the next two weekends that will offer unusual items. The 300 lots to be offered beginning at 2 p.m. Friday at the gallery at 1347 Naamans Creek Rd., Garnet Valley, include weaponry, uniforms, war posters, and a relatively unknown military collectible - trench art. All are from the estate of the late Dale E. Biever of Boyertown, a schoolteacher and onetime registrar of Philadelphia's Civil War Museum and Library.

  Once again the local auction community will join the post-Thanksgiving shopping rush, with at least two suburban sales scheduled the day after Black Friday. Both will offer objects suitable for gift-giving at more affordable prices than usual. Beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday at its annual Thanksgiving weekend auction at the Ludwig's Corner firehouse, Wiederseim Associates will offer more than 600 lots of antique and decorative furniture and accessories, notably maritime art, miniature portraits on ivory, gold coins, and silver.