How a Harrogate family upholstery business got to make over the Omaze homes

If you needed an antique chair restoring you would go to independent family firm Reeves & Co Upholstery on Kings Road which was a renowned bastion of old-fashioned craft skills after it was first established in 1979.

“Mum was Italian dad Irish and they met in Bradford. Dad trained as an upholsterer from the age of 15 when he left Bradford Grammar,” explains daughter Michaela who took over the business in 2018 after her father died.

"When they got married they emigrated to Canada where he worked as an upholsterer.” They returned to the UK in 1968 but Ken realised that Bradford wasn’t the place in those days to start an upholstery business and so they decided to move to Harrogate in 1979 where he initially worked from the family garage for six months before getting a mortgage to buy some buildings in the centre of the affluent town.

"He had this dream to run a business in Harrogate and give me and my brother a good life and he did it. He got it right.”

He opened a showroom on a street at the back of Kings Road and when a building on the opposite side of the street came up for sale he bought that as well so that he could expand the workshop, offices and showroom. He specialised in antique reupholstery.

“A lot of families in Harrogate had antiques that were passed down through the generations but they would often want to have them reupholstered,” says Michaela. But he also did commercial work including the conference centre, Harrogate Theatre, Ripley Castle and Harewood House. He also did Alnwick Castle in Northumbria and all the furniture that appeared in the Harry Potter films.

“I wish he was here now to see what I am doing. I used to ask him to teach me and he said it was too much and I would just love to show him what we are doing now,” she says.

Michaela had worked for her dad every Saturday growing up. “I used to get £20 on a Saturday when I was 16 and I was still getting £20 when I was 46 and living in Skipton – he was a tight Yorkshireman.

"I’d help tidy the showroom and really got to know the interiors side of things as I had a real interest in interior design. I knew the business but he wouldn’t share his upholstery knowledge as he said it was all in his head and would be too much to pass on.” And so Michaela followed her own career in advertising. When her father was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease aged 72 he decided to sell the buildings to retire and Michaela was drafted in to help clear the workshops and showrooms he’d had since 1979.

"My dad was in hospital and my friend was with him on Facetime as I went through these huge buildings with 100s of pieces of furniture as we tried to work out who they belonged to. It was so difficult as paperwork wasn’t his strong suit.”

Sadly her father died and Michaela was left to clear the buildings as her mum had died of Motor Neurone Disease ten years earlier.

But his ancient mobile phone kept ringing with work and people asking for recommendations for a good upholsterer in the area after Miachale told them Ken had died.

"I kept having to say no sorry there isn’t anyone in Harrogate who does upholstery any more and people were really upset. But then my dad left me a nice sum of money in his will and I thought why don’t I restart the business, there is obviously a need.”

And so Michaela got a small unit in Harrogate, advertised for upholsterers in Leeds and Bradford where they still train the craft.

“I managed to get two upholsterers, got my dad’s sewing machinist back and two of my dad’s old upholsters to come in and work with us for six months to show us how it was all done and it just took off,” says Michaela.

"Everyone who came through the door knew dad. It was the Reeves name, it was like wildfire it went crazy. I was gong home to Skipton stressed and I said to my partner Mark that he was going to have to come in with me and we were going to have to move to Harrogate.” Mark sold his business and went to Burnley college to retrain in upholstery. Reeves & Co now have three units and have three upholsterers, three machinists, an interior designer three days a week and Mark and Michaela.

Like her dad before her most of Michaela’s clients are domestic, but they also do pubs, restaurants, TV sets, show homes and most recently Omaze, the for-profit organisation that raffles off houses to raise money for charity.

"We did a house in Birstwith in Harrogate. The owner gave us two chairs to recover and when Mark took them back she said they weren’t her chairs. They actually were her chairs but I had covered them in the wrong fabric. I felt awful and just thought I can’t do this job,. But luckily she found it quite funny but they were selling the house so asked us to reupholster them quickly which we did.

"She said the house was sold and Omaze had bought it. The interior designers that go into stage the house wanted a zip mended on a cushion quickly. I said we could do it and then she asked if we could reupholster two bar stools in three days and we did and then she wanted a chair done quickly too, I was able to juggle the lads around and did it for her.

"The next thing I saw the house on TV.” Two months later they contacted her again about a house they were doing in York which Michaela did.

"They then asked if there was anyway they could use us for the whole country which we now do using couriers based in Harrogate.”

They’ve just finished the house in the Wirral and have started work on a house in the Lake District for the Christmas draw.

"When we are really busy we do have a subcontractor in Leeds who lends us a hand and we still have my dad’s machinist who is 80 and she comes in one day a week. We all pull together.” Although the big commercial jobs are great, Michaela says it is the smaller domestic jobs that really get to her.

"I do sometimes get tearful when customers come in and you nee this knackered chair that was great grandad’s and we help them pick a fabric to reupholster it. We also do something called a time capsule so when there’s a family heirloom chair we have these sealable bags and give them to the client and ask them to write a letter and put a photograph in of something that means something about the chair.

"It might be their grandaughter’s first birthday and they are reupholstering this chair for the nursery so this time capsule goes in the chair as we work on it and we put a special Reeves sticker underneath that says please be gentle when reupholstering this cahir as there’s a time capsule in this chair please pass it on.

“I did it for one person – I actually put some cat hair in the bag as it was the cat’s favourite chair – and I got the idea for a time capsule. To see a customer come in with a knackered frame in and then when we hand it back to them it is really emotional.”

It is just upholstery that Reeve’s do they also work on the wood.

"We often have customers who have inherited a piece of antique furniture but they live in a modern house and so we can strip the wood, reoil it to make it look more modern,” says Michaela. “We can strip it back, paint it and then distress it – we can do anything to make it feel modern and then put a fabric on to make it feel more modern but they still have the heirloom in the frame.

"Some people come in crying – it’s super nice and a real Repair Shop moment. My dad would be laughing his head off . He is still very much wth us in spirit. Its been so hard to learn what he has known for 55 years and I am still learning every day. But we have such a good lauch and really enjoy what we do and continuing what dad started.”

www.reevesupholsteryhouse.co.uk