Old Italian / Sicilian Chairs?

Hi,

My husband's mother left him 2 chairs. They are in need of re-upholstering and one of the legs of one of the chairs is broken. We do not however know where the chairs came from. We believe they came from one of the following 2 sources:

(a) They are chairs which have been in my husband's mother's family a long time, in which case they are likely of Italian / Sicilian origin as that is where her and her family were from.

(b) My husband's mother moved to Ireland in the 1960s following marrying an Irish man and these chairs are not actually her family heirlooms but simply chairs she purchased, most likely in an antique shop or similar in Ireland.

Our view is that if they are old Italian / Sicilian chairs, they are likely family heirlooms and we should get them repaired and re-upholstered, but, if they are not, we should not go to that expense as they are not really family heirlooms.

Would anybody with any knowledge of chairs, be able to offer any advice?

Many Thanks

Allie

 

Welcome Allie!
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I cannot help with origin nor date but I like them.
They look welcoming to me and I bet they are comfy.
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I don't see the leg damage but since I can't I assume it isn't serious and even if so, as far as I'm concerned, with their provenance worth repair and recovering regardless of origin.
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Until the furniture pros show up with answers here don't do anything to them.
Good luck!

 

Thanks. One leg of one chair is damaged and pretty badly I'd say, though I've no knowledge of furniture to say what's bad and what's not here. It seems in the past somebody tried to do a quick repair of it, but that repair wasn't good and hasn't lasted. I'll upload two photos of the damaged leg now.

 

Yikes! Well.... Best they could do.
This can be fixed by someone much better suited for it and I wouldn't think too costly either.

 

The other items left were a console table, 2 bedside lockers, a bed headboard, mirror and a red upholstered chair. We feel sure (as my husband's mother told us) that the console table, 2 bedside lockers, bed headboard and mirror are from her family in Sicily and old and will be getting these restored (if necessary) and keeping them in the family. It's the chairs we are unsure of especially the 2 I've asked about here as the damage to one seems significant so expensive to repair we'd fear.

 

The red chair looks like a prie dieu ,and the gold ones look like they are 1950s-60s ? The cabinet is interesting,and to me seems like the oldest piece,possibly 1900ish . But wait for the experts,thats all conjecture.

 

Those more ornate pieces could well be Italian/Sicilian. The two single ones look like decent early 19th C boudoir type chairs, and quite possibly English.

 

Johnny, I always thought a prie dieu was a prayer kneeler and not a chair..?

 

Thank you everyone. Re prayer chair type furniture, the family were Catholic. The chairs here I have no idea what age they are or where they came from, but things like the bed headboard, bedside tables and mirror I would have thought earlier than 1900s, on the basis of being told a story that they came from the house of a great grandparent in Sicily. But that said, old family stories get mixed up sometimes.

 

Don't have a lot of time to comment here but those first chairs do not strike me as Italian. They may well be old but don't have the outward quality or are as interesting as your other furnishings.

 

Oh yes definitely appear to come from both a Catholic and an Sicilian background but the furniture may not all be Italian. Looks common to that genre of folk's homes I've seen in the (Italian) New Orleans areas.

The wood veneer on the tall sideboard would be worth a repair. Is that burled wood? I don't know what kind, so I'd just go by the color of the wood itself to splice in pieces that won't detract from the original. I really like this piece and would think nothing of restoring it to it's original beauty but if you're not going to keep it, I suggest you let the buyer do it.

Nice stuff! *smiles*

 

My husband's maternal grandparents were both from wealthy Sicilian families. Some items, like the bed headboard, I'd be surprised if the story of that having been in the bedroom of a Sicilian great grandparent are untrue. I don't think my mother in law acquired any Italian style furniture in Ireland ever, I think that all did come from her family in Italy/Sicily. Items may have been subject to poor restorations though, like the headboard seems to have been varnished a lot, or possibly even bits of furniture broke and were repaired in Ireland with newer wood. We are not seeking to sell or get rid of anything that came from the old family in Sicily. But items like the 2 gold upholstered chairs, if they are not from Sicily, but rather items picked up in Ireland in the 1960s onwards, that's not family heirlooms we feel, and we don't want to keep them necessarily. My husband's mother settled in Ireland in the 1960s and this is where the furniture has come from now. I doubt she ever had the possibility of picking up any Italian/Sicilian furniture in Ireland from the 1960s until her death. Ireland isn't the sort of place you'd find such furniture, there was never like an Italian community in Ireland, as you might have in many parts of the US, only a handful of Irish families that an Italian had married into, and then a small group of Italians who came to open Italian restaurants etc.

 

I was recently in the house of my mother-in-law's brother who is still alive in Italy and he showed my this portrait which I think he said was his maternal grandfather. I took a photo of it. This is the sort of person I'm thinking some of this furniture may have came from. Maybe not him exactly, there would have been various grandparents and great grandparents, but his sort of generation of Sicilians.

 

I'm very interested in family history, but my areas of knowledge are the UK and Ireland. As I don't speak Italian or know Italy, my knowledge is very poor here.

 

Any advice here is given freely and with an eye towards accuracy.
None of it it meant to call into question family history , or tales passed down through the generations.

That said, there are times when Grandpa's old pocket watch was purchased at an antique shop, and not given to him by his mothers great grandmother.....

 

Oh yes, whilst I know nothing of antiques, I know family history, and I would think most family histories contain many a tale passed down which is anywhere from not quite true to an outright lie! Especially where there is "shame", like an illegitimately born child, a gay relation, a family member who committed suicide or someone who turned to crime or was so poor they died in the workhouse, then untruths are often told. My personal feeling is that I like the truth though, and there is no harm in seeking the truth, if you are doing so at a time where all the people concerned are now dead. Also I think generally many families lose their like family heirlooms easily over generations, often this is unavoidable, but if you have something you think is a family heirloom, it's good to treasure it. Equally though, you can't keep everything, so it's good to sort the items with family history from those which aren't really family heirlooms at all, hence the original question!

 

To my mind, knowing that your husband's family was wealthy is at least consistent with the furniture having been brought from Italy to Ireland.

When families have modest means, I'd think they're less likely to be able to bring furniture with them when they move to another country, though that's just a guess on my part.

I think your strategy makes sense of holding onto older pieces and selling newer ones if you don't care for them.