I was recently trolling eBay, as I far too frequently do, and came across an auction for a bed and two Windsor chairs for $23 Buy It Now.

The bed was meh, but those chairs looked suspiciously like William Clinger chairs. Even if they weren’t, they looked nice enough to take a chance on. So I did.

About a year and a half ago I got a good deal on two Clinger chairs at Auntie Em’s Miniatures in Arizona — $35 for the one on the left and $40 for the one on the right.

When my eBay gamble arrived I eagerly flipped over the chairs to look for a signature, and yes, they’re William Clinger! Honestly, I had forgotten when I bought these that I already had a matching one.

Now that I almost had a full set, could I possibly find one more? Why, yes, there happened to be one on Etsy for $69.95.

Still glowing from the high of getting two of these beauties for just $23, I was hesitant to buy the expensive one. But then I did the math: (23 + 35 + 70)/4 = $32 per chair. That’s still a good deal! Especially considering there’s a similar set on eBay right now listed at $480. Of course, list price isn’t the same as sold price, but it makes me feel good about my finds. (I’m saving a pic of the eBay chairs here for when that auction isn’t there anymore…)

While I was waiting for my fourth chair to arrive, I pulled out a table kit I’ve been hanging on to for awhile.

The chairs are walnut and this table is too.

I stained it with natural stain.

This is how it looked when the table was still wet.

While I was staining the table, it fell apart in my hands. The table kit looked like it should have gone together nicely — there was a pin sticking out of the base that slots into a hole in the feet crosspiece, and a little nub in the top of the base that sticks into a hole in the bottom of the tabletop — but when I put it all together the pieces wiggled around and refused to glue nicely.

I didn’t take any pics of this, but I ended up removing the pin, cutting off the nub, and then sanding the top and bottom of the base (which were slightly rounded) with the disc sander. Once those ends were flat, I managed to successfully glue the table together.

Meanwhile, the fourth chair arrived.

Here’s the table after the natural stain dried. I waxed it, thinking that would give it a nice sheen. Bad idea for two reasons: the wax I had was for light-colored wood, and it left light streaks on the walnut. Also, wax got stuck in the grooves in the base. Obviously this was going to happen. I don’t why I did it.

I scraped the wax out of the grooves the best I could with a pin. Then I added a second coat of stain, this time using a Dark Walnut stain pen. I wasn’t sure if this would work over the wax, but it did, both covering up the light spots and bringing the color of the table closer to the chairs.

This looks decent, but if I want to better match the table with the chairs, I’ll have to use a shinier finish. I don’t know what the William Clinger chairs are finished with. Varnish? Oil?

Anyway, here are a few more pictures relevant to the topic of Clinger chairs. I got this rocking chair on eBay at the same time as the Bespaq kitchen for the Turret House, thinking it might look good in the Mansard Victorian’s nursery. (I paid $65 for this one. and really didn’t need it, but as noted in that blog post, it was a late-night impulse buy!) Both the rocker and the writing chair I got at Auntie Em’s have a cherry finish.

For reference, this is William Clinger’s signature.

I recently read an interesting paragraph or two about him but I didn’t save it and can’t find it now. (I thought it was on the Miniature Designs Facebook, but at the moment their Facebook page seems to have been made private or deleted.) But I did find his obituary:

Bill was born in Philadelphia, PA January 17, 1932, the son of the late John Spencer and Martha Jane Chambers Clinger. He was a US Army veteran. He entered the service in 1951 in Massachusetts. Bill received his 2nd Lt. Commission in 1953. He was accepted into the Ranger program and until his Honorable discharge, he was in Japan as a cold weather mountain climbing and ski patrol instructor.Following service to his country, Bill was educated at the Richmond Virginia Professional Institute, the College of William and Mary, Penn State, and finally received his Master’s Degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His major life careers included 27 years as a Sanitarian in Environmental Health/Personnel at the United States Public Health Service in New York, Washington DC, and Maryland. Upon retirement in 1983, Bill worked for 30 years as a miniature doll house furniture artisan in Charleston, SC.

As I played around with these chairs, I remembered I have a beautiful 1:12 Windsor chair that I got a good deal on at an estate sale years ago. Could it also be a William Clinger?

Nope, this one’s W.C. Auger.

Seeing the 1:12 chair next to the 1:24 Clinger chair really illustrates how much smaller half scale is. That 1:12 chair looks enormous!