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THE DIGEST
Second Hand September Spotlight: Harlie Briggs
Artist Harlie Briggs has hand-painted a 19th-century walnut library steps chair in folk-art style, adding hand-carved panels of tulips, clovers and a rearing horse. For Second Hand September, this one-of-one piece reminds us to cherish everyday moments and celebrate humble ingenuity.
A 19th-century walnut library steps chair. The kind of ingenious Victorian design that transforms between two uses: stool and chair, held together by one old-fashioned button.
Artist Harlie Briggs encountered this piece and was charmed by its design philosophy: that one object could serve two purposes elegantly, that engineering and beauty could exist in the same piece. "I fell for the fact that it transforms between two uses, all via one old-fashioned button," she recalls. "There's something so charming about that kind of ingenuity. You can tell it was made by someone who really cared about the craft."
For our Sit Differently campaign, she painted it in folk-art style, bringing tulips, clovers and a rearing horse across the panels. She added the words "these are the good old days" as a reminder to notice and cherish everyday moments.
The walnut's rich, warm tones provided the perfect canvas. Natural materials aligned with her nature-focused artwork. The wood became her blank slate.
Celebrating character in craftsmanship
"Vintage furniture pieces are special because they've lived a few stories already," Harlie reflects. "They've often been handcrafted, are more detailed and made better too. This piece is a walnut library steps chair dating back to the 1800s, so you can really feel the care in the joinery in a way that's rare in anything new. It even has its original hinges still doing their job, nearly two centuries on."
For Harlie, working on vintage pieces meant honouring that history. Her folk-art painting didn't erase the chair's character, but added to it. The hand-carved detailing she found throughout, from turned legs to delicate floral wood carving, spoke to her values as an artist.
"My artwork is nature-focused, so natural materials like wood are most aligned with what I do. Walnut carries such rich, warm tones that it already felt full of character before I'd even picked up a brush," she explains.
"Buying better, not more is about having spaces that are slowly built over time," Harlie reflects. "When you find something special that is well made and is the right fit, it slowly tells a story of a room, a map of all the places you have been, rather than filling it with new items before you've even had the chance to live in the space. It's about letting a room build itself around pieces you truly love and will keep for future generations."
When the future owner unwraps this chair, Harlie hopes they'll feel "a sense of playfulness that folk-inspired art usually brings, creating a happy corner of a room. Somewhere your eye lands and you smile without quite knowing why, every time you walk past it or use it to reach the top shelf."
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