Embrace an easy, damage-free way to get more wall art space, without a wall! (And use leftover IKEA hardware while you’re at it!)

Sometimes the solution you have been waiting for does pop out of a sealed plastic bag at the bottom of an IKEA garden chair.
But we get a head of ourselves…

Long have lugged this wooden chair around –

…found on the streets of London and, though seatless, sturdy and perfectly (naturally) distressed.
This beauty has served as a makeshift shelf and home to books and objets. The intention was to weave a new seat, but then our intentions sometimes get put on hold.

We always knew, though, that there was more to the chair than a simple shelf life.

We loved the simplicity and strength of the back, and tested ways of putting it to use beyond the ordinary, but nothing stuck.

And since moving into the new HQ, this wonderful James Larsen painting has been kicking around looking for a home.

James Larsen is a talented Australian artist who we first met in Spitalfields Market circa 2002 and took to following around London until his departure for Germany in the mid-2000s. We collected as much as we could afford before James left, but this painting – the first we ever acquired – is a treasured piece that needed a cool spot.

And then last week, our IKEA garden chairs arrived and included is this bracket (for bolting two chairs together) and we kept thinking that it would come to use somehow.

Then we realised that the bracket, if screwed to the right thickness of shim, would fit over the chair back, where the shim could support a painting…

Maybe this is easier to show than explain…

And now our James Larsen painting magically hangs from the chair back and looms lovely over the chair seat tableau.