Ercol Daybed designed by Lucian Ercolani

Well its been a long time coming but the Ercol Daybed is finally finished. The top left photo is how the sofa looked when we bought it, the wood was dark and the cushions old and flat with the foam crumbling inside. So hubby set to and rubbed the dark varnish off, oiled and matt varnished the light wood and added new rubber webbing to the seat. This week we ordered foam cushions ready cut to size, we already had the fabric which is heavy duty upholstery fabric in a brown tweed and only cost me £20 from ebay :)
  Yesterday and today I spent time making the pattern by drawing around the cushions. I took the zips out of the old covers and found a great you tube clip showing a really quick and easy way of inserting zips. The longest one is 64", the other three about 20" each and all three took me less than half an hour to sew into the fabric...that's how easy it was. Here's the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q-BJT1x4Vo

   

 The back panel unscrews at the bottom of each post and lifts off to enable the sofa to be used as a single bed

I am really pleased with the finished daybed. 

For anyone interested on the life and work of Lucian Ercolani, carry on reading :)

Lucian Randolph Ercolani (8 May 1888 – 9 June 1976),^[1] furniture designer, was born in St Angelo, Tuscany, Italy. His father, Abdon Ercolani, a pictureframe maker, migrated toLondon, England, in search of work, and in 1898 was joined by his family. Lucian Ercolani attended a Salvation Army school in London, which he left in 1902, aged 14, to take up a job as a Salvation Army messenger boy. Encouraged by his parents to continue his education, Ercolani enrolled for night school at Shoreditch Technical Institute, where he studied drawing, design, and the theory and construction of furniture. In the early 1900s, Shoreditch was a thriving centre of furniture-making.

By 1906, Ercolani was working in the Salvation Army joinery department, producing staircases and handrails. In 1910, Frederick Parker (later of Parker-Knoll fame) invited him to join his firm, which made furniture at workshops in High Wycombe, the 'furniture capital' of England. In 1912, Ercolani took up a part-time appointment at High Wycombe Technical School, teaching furniture design to evening classes which were attended by High Wycombe’s furniture makers. It was here that he met Edward Gomme, son of a High Wycombe chair-maker. At the outbreak of World War I, Ercolani joined E Gomme Ltd., chair-makers (whose G-Plan range of furniture enjoyed considerable success in the 1950s and 1960s). As Ercolani recorded in his biography: “At Gomme’s … it seemed to me … that the simple chair was the outcome of very good and precise workmanship.”

Ercolani was married in 1915, to Eva Brett, and they had three children. He took British citizenship in 1923.

In 1920, Ercolani had joined a furniture-making consortium in High Wycombe, trading as Furniture Industries. The business expanded through acquisition, and government orders during World War II for wooden tent pegs and bentwood chairs ensured its success. In the late-1940s, Ercolani developed his range of mass-produced Ercol furniture, which became a household name in post-war Britain, and which continues today. He played an active part in the Furniture Industry, being a founder member of the industry's guild, the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers and its Master for 1957-58.

In 2010 the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers awarded a Design Guild Mark for Lucian's Originals collection, as they are now know. The Originals collection reflected a break from the heavy, ornate pre-war styles towards a new clean lined, simple elegance. They were first launched in the late 1950s and were relaunched by Ercol in 2003.