Objectspace’s Antiques Roadshow-style chair event asks: Who sat here?

Two of the "mystery" chairs that will feature in an upcoming Objectspace Antiques Roadshow-type event.

Who made these mystery chairs?

Expect experts in the hot seats - and an audience on the edge of theirs - when an Antiques Roadshow-style event hits Auckland’s Objectspace.

“This has been one of those Pandora’s Box projects,” says Victoria McAdam, the gallery’s partnerships manager.

A call-out for “mystery” chairs resulted in more than 60 responses from people wanting to know more about the furniture they had inherited or collected.

Now, six of those pieces will be debated by a panel of experts at a February 24 event organised to accompany the Objectspace exhibition The Chair: A story of design and making in Aotearoa.

McAdam says the gallery has prioritised furniture with unknown or disputed makers, questions around age and design, and curious backstories.

Among the most puzzling is a hall chair carved with Māori designs. The Auckland owners - who won it at an auction - suspect it may have once been used by someone working a wool spinning wheel.

A carved wooden chair, purchased at auction several years ago, is one of the pieces to be discussed at an Antiques Roadshow-style event at Objectspace, Auckland, on February 24.

Also up for discussion is a canvas and wooden chair inherited from in-laws who bought it from an architect almost three decades ago, and a folding plywood chair bought in a Hawke’s Bay junk shop in 2012.

“It’s not a complete mystery, as it still has a partial sticker for Stol Kamnik Yugoslavia on the underside of the seat, but the owner is keen to know how old it is and how it made it to New Zealand.”

The expert panel comprises academic Linda Tyler, furniture restorer Jonathan Maze and vintage furniture dealer Dan Eagle.

McAdam says the huge interest in The Chair and an upcoming book of the exhibition - which features 110 chairs spanning 170 chairs and more than 80 designers - has taken Objectspace by surprise.

“We understood the chair has a unique place in the design world as a piece of furniture that is in direct relationship with the body. It’s a favourite of architects, designers, engineers ... but we didn’t realise quite how pervasive the love of chairs is. There is this really deep love!”

The Chair “Antiques Roadshow” at Objectspace Auckland, 11am-1pm, February 24.