Sold: 1 chair, possibly once home to Joey Smallwood's posterior
Did Newfoundland's Father of Confederation once sit here? Maybe
Proving that a famous posterior can help sell just about anything, a rather bedraggled chair with the bold claim of having been Joey Smallwood's has emerged into the spotlight for a new lease on life — or at the very least, some new leather.
The chair, with its cracked burgundy covering and ripped-up seat, has clearly seen better days.
It has been serving Rick Boland's seating-related needs for the last several decades, ever since the St. John's actor rescued it from provincial government storage back in 1992, after asking the government for furniture donations for a non-profit recycling group.
"I went out to this hangar — it was wild actually, out in Torbay, on the other side from the airport — and it was full of office furniture that had either been discarded or was there for repair," recalled Boland.
"I saw this older chair, and I said, 'Oh, that's nice'. It's different from the regular office fare, and the guy who was helping us there said, 'Yeah, that's Joey Smallwood's chair.'"
The caretaker clarified it hadn't been Smallwood's chair in the House of Assembly — that sealskin seat of power now resides at The Rooms — but rather a more everyday model the Father of Confederation used in the premier's office.
Boland was skeptical, but the tale appealed.
"I didn't believe him right away, but hey, he had a good story," he said. He took the chair and dug into its past, researching the acquisition number printed on a sticker underneath the chair, which proved to have been associated with the premier, further solidifying it into Smallwood's life.
Boland held onto the possible piece of history, always intending to fix it up, but when a caster finally broke off amid a downsizing effort, he decided it no longer sparked joy and decided to sell it online.
Clearly viewing the chair through rose-coloured glasses, Boland described it as "elegant" in the ad, although he also admitted it needed reupholstering and a caster fix. Wisely, its Smallwood connection was right up in the title.
"If anything was going to sell it, it was going to be its provenance," said Boland, referring to the antique world's term for a piece's historical ownership.
Boland's selling tactic worked, and it was snapped up within hours, by, of all things, a young person.
"It was odd, because what kind of 20-something-year-old would be interested in Joey Smallwood's chair?" said Boland.
Political fan
Turns out you're never to young to be fascinated with tenuous claims to historical fame.
When Curtis Knee, 21, caught wind of the chair from a friend, he knew what he had to do.
"I immediately stopped what I was doing and was determined to purchase that chair. Which I did. And it's great," he said.
Knee paid $260 to own a possible piece of provincial history, and he has no regrets.
"Politics has been a big part of my life ever since I was like 14, so to get something, such a defining object from the NLpoli sphere, definitely wasn't something I was going to pass up," he said.
No slouch in the amateur antiquing department himself, Knee has also dug up a few clues to the chair's history. His grandparents both worked for a company in the 1950s that sold furniture to the provincial government, and recognized the brand of chair as one well known to be used in government during the Smallwood era, Knee said.
Knee also rewatched the Smallwood documentary A Little Fellow From Gambo, scanning for seating, and said his newly acquired chair bears a striking resemblance to some from the film.
Knee grew up in Paradise but his family comes from Smallwood's neck of the woods, with some relatives owning a hotel in Gambo Smallwood used to frequent, he said, making the chair all the more special.
Realizing the chair needs a little love, Knee is now in search of an upholsterer to restore its leather and refinish its wood.
After that he'll cherish the possible seat of power, for a while, anyway.
"I'm definitely going to enjoy it for a while, but who knows what I'm going to do with it next."
With files from On The Go