Distasterous vintage furniture restoration

Simply put, if you value your furniture, stay miles away from Martin Beech and Fine Pieces in Cape Town.

Around 1970, my parents bought these Danish Mogens Koch Interna folding chairs. The pair are now apparently worth around R20k or more. I sent them to Martin to have all the joints reglued and some of the brass rings re-fixed. He completely botched up this fairly simple job.

First, he took much longer to repair the chairs than promised and, then, after I picked them up I realised he had only worked on the brass rings and forgot to reglue all the joints. This took him ages to do then. Tragically, when he took the chairs apart to reglue, he completely botched things up.

If it wasn’t so tragic, the number of things he got wrong would be comical. His work demonstrates a complete lack of interest, aptitude and attention to detail. I asked him to refund my fee. He didn’t.

I subsequently spoke to to two antique specialists/restorers (of good repute — I did my homework this time) and one of them was aghast, saying: “These are valuable chairs and this guy “*****ed them up completely”.