The Collection · Object 004
The Garden Bench
Repaired eleven times in ninety years, and still the first seat taken when the light comes over the west side.
Oak and iron · Soho Square
The record
Its ends are original; almost nothing else is. The slats have been replaced in pairs, at intervals, by people who kept the profile even when a cheaper section would have done.
The repairs are not disguised. You can read them the way you read rings in a tree: two boards from the fifties, four from the seventies, one much newer and still lighter than the rest.
The House takes it as the plainest argument it knows. A thing is not kept because it is precious. It is kept because someone, repeatedly, decided it was worth another afternoon.
The making
- Maker
- A parks workshop, maker unrecorded
- Materials
- English oak, cast iron ends, brass fixings