Vinterior invites five creatives to rework pre loved chairs for Second Hand September
Vinterior has launched Sit Differently, its Second Hand September 2026 campaign bringing together five UK brands and makers to transform pre-loved chairs into one-of-a-kind pieces shaped by their individual creative practices. House of Hackney, Oliver Spencer, With Nothing Underneath and artists Sam Wood and Harlie Briggs each selected a chair from Vinterior’s archive before interpreting it through upholstery, textiles or hand-painted interventions. Built around the idea of “character over conformity,” the project considers vintage furniture as a form of personal expression while preserving the histories already carried by each object.
House of Hackney selected a 19th-century James Shoolbred armchair and upholstered it in XYLEM, a print from the British interiors brand’s OVERSTORY collection that draws inspiration from the vascular networks found within Britain’s endangered temperate rainforests. The intervention connects the existing craftsmanship of the antique chair with a contemporary textile whose botanical pattern reflects the brand’s relationship with the natural world, retaining the furniture’s historic character while introducing a new decorative layer.
Fashion provides a different point of departure for Oliver Spencer and With Nothing Underneath, with both brands translating materials associated with their clothing into furniture. Oliver Spencer covered a B&B Italia Metropolitan Me84 armchair in contrasting houndstooth wool from its collection, combining panels of green and burgundy pink with the chair’s sculptural contemporary form. With Nothing Underneath worked with a small mahogany settee with cabriole legs, upholstering it in the womenswear brand’s striped TENCEL Lyocell, a material derived from natural wood pulp that Vinterior describes as biodegradable and compostable.
Artists Sam Wood and Harlie Briggs approached their pieces through painting while retaining visible connections to the furniture’s previous lives. Wood transformed a pair of Victorian birch antique chairs through gestural areas of saturated colour layered with observational drawing, preserving their existing patina instead of removing the traces accumulated over time. Briggs selected a 19th-century walnut library steps chair whose original mechanism allows it to function as both a stool and a seat, covering its panels with folk-art-inspired tulips, clovers and a rearing horse alongside the phrase “these are the good old days.”
Across the five interpretations, Sit Differently uses furniture from different periods and typologies as a common framework for contemporary creative expression, allowing existing craftsmanship to remain visible alongside each participant’s intervention. The campaign reflects Vinterior’s wider emphasis on extending the life of vintage furniture, while the one-of-one format reinforces the individuality already inherent in objects that have accumulated their own materials, marks and histories before reaching their new owners.
The Sit Differently collection launched on 15 September through Vinterior, with prices starting at £1,200 and every reworked piece available as a one-of-one. As part of the Second Hand September campaign, Vinterior is donating a share of proceeds from the collection to Plant One, a UK charity working to restore native woodland, connecting the project’s focus on extending the lifespan of existing furniture with the marketplace’s broader environmental commitments.
All images courtesy of Vinterior, shared with permission
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