The Butterfly Effect: Reviving an Ercol Classic in Soft Pastels

Some furniture shouts. The Butterfly chair does something quieter and much more useful: it makes a room look as though someone with good taste has been living in it for years. It is the chair you find pushed into the corner of a bay window in a Victorian terrace, holding a stack of magazines and a cat. It is also, happily, one of the easiest mid-century pieces to bring back to life.

This is a love letter, but it comes with a workshop list.

Why this chair keeps coming back

The Butterfly is a shape that reads instantly: a wide, scooped back of slim spindles that flares out like wings, generous arms, and four splayed legs that give it a slightly startled, on-tiptoe stance. It is light enough to move with one hand and comfortable enough that nobody believes you when you say so.

That combination — pretty, useful and cheap enough to be overlooked — is why so many of them survived. They were never precious. They were the chair by the phone, the chair in the hall, the chair in a bedroom that got used as a wardrobe. Which is also why so many of them now need a bit of attention.

A short history, from a Buckinghamshire workshop

Ercol was founded by Lucian Ercolani, an Italian-born designer who settled in High Wycombe — a town so tied to chairmaking that it once turned out furniture by the trainload. The company built its reputation on honest timber, clever engineering and the kind of joinery that let you flat-pack a chair before flat-packing was a thing.

By the late 1950s the Butterfly had arrived in the catalogue, and it has more or less stayed in production in one form or another ever since. Original examples turn up in elm and beech, with the pale, slightly rosy elm seat making the chair look almost edible. Later versions are more uniform, and the very modern ones are beautifully made but a little too crisp for the nostalgic eye.

Telling the real thing from a lookalike

Plenty of chairs borrow the wing-backed spindle idea, so check properly before you hand over your money.

• Look for the maker's mark. Ercol used branded stamps and a range of labels over the decades; older pieces often carry a mark underneath the seat or on the back rail.
• Examine the spindles. They should be slim, evenly turned and set into the seat and back rail with visible, tidy joints.
• Check the seat. Solid elm with a gentle curve is a good sign; thin plywood is not.
• Look at the legs. Splayed, tapered and usually with a slight outward kick.
• Be suspicious of perfect symmetry. Genuine vintage examples have small irregularities, and the joints often show the shadow of old glue.

If you are buying online, ask for photographs of the underside and of any stamp. A seller who sends them promptly is usually a seller worth trusting.

Assessing a tired frame

Most of the work on a Butterfly is glue, not carpentry. Put the chair on a flat floor and press gently on each corner in turn. A chair that clicks or shifts is telling you its joints have dried out.

Check the spindle-to-seat joints one by one; they work loose over sixty-odd years and they are the usual source of wobble. Look for splits along the grain of the seat, and for old repairs carried out with dark filler, which will show through any pale finish. Run a fingernail along the back rail for hairline cracks.

Small splits are fine and, frankly, characterful. A clean break in a leg is a job for someone with clamps and patience — worth doing, but price the chair accordingly.

The honest restoration notes

Start with a gentle clean rather than a sanding belt. Warm water with a drop of washing-up liquid on a barely damp cloth will lift decades of grime, and you will be surprised how much colour comes back.

For loose joints, the traditional answer is animal or hide glue, warmed and worked into the joint after the old glue has been cleaned out as far as you reasonably can. It grips well and, crucially, it can be undone again by a future owner. Modern PVA is convenient but makes future repairs harder, and polyurethane glue is best kept for garden furniture.

Where the wood is sound and the colour is good, leave it alone. A coat of oil or a soft wax will feed the timber and keep the chair looking as though it has been in the family for years. Only sand where the surface is truly damaged, and always with the grain.

If a cushion or seat pad has had it, a slim box cushion in a washed linen with a simple piped edge will look right and cost far less than reupholstering something complicated.

The pastel question

Here is where the Butterfly is unusually accommodating. The spindle back gives the eye something to look through, so a painted version never feels heavy. Pale powder pink, soft sage, a milky duck egg, almond, or the palest possible lilac all work — the key is to keep it chalky and understated rather than sweet-shop bright.

If you do paint, use a water-based eggshell or a good chalk paint over a shellac-based primer, because the tannins in elm can ghost through pale finishes and leave you with a yellow bloom you did not ask for. Take the frame apart as much as you can, paint thinly, and wipe back the edges so the wear looks like time rather than a technique.

Then there is the loveliest option of all: leave the frame bare and paint only the seat, or the reverse. It keeps the vintage character intact while giving the chair just enough softness to sit happily in a pastel room.

Styling it in a modern British home

The Butterfly is a natural for all those awkward spots. Beside a bay window with a sheepskin over one arm. Tucked into a bedroom corner as a place to throw a dressing gown. Pulled up to a plain wooden desk. Paired rather than matched, one painted and one bare.

Surround it with warm off-white walls, a faded floral hanging or a chintz cushion that nods to your grandmother's taste, and a rug with a bit of age to it. Skip the chrome and the monochrome styling; this chair wants softness, cotton, and a bit of tarnish.

Finding one in 2026

Prices vary wildly and, as of this year, have crept up. Rough, wobbly examples still surface at car boots and local auction rooms for little money, while tidy examples with original labels fetch considerably more online. Marketplace, Gumtree and specialist mid-century dealers are the usual hunting grounds, and pairs are rarer than singles.

Buy the chair with the best frame, not the best paint. Paint can be redone. A snapped back rail cannot be undone so easily. And if you find one with a cat-shaped dent in the cushion, so much the better — that is exactly the sort of history worth keeping.