The Next Question with Hudson Brod (EP 2)

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From quick errands around town to long stretches of open highway, Firestone helps keep you moving with confidence no matter where you're headed. Visit FirestoneTire.com to learn more Firestone. Always dependable since 1900. In the town of Stone Mountain, Georgia, about a half hour drive from Atlanta, there is a small museum. Small as in, there's only three rooms, but also small because of what's inside. This museum is called the Collectible and Antique Chair Gallery, so people often come through the front door, expecting to see chairs, full-size arm chairs, dining room furniture. But think smaller than that. The chairs in this museum are actually all miniature chairs. Not just any miniature chairs. In all the mountain markets, you know, always say not dog house furniture, because people see minute tools, they think a dog furniture. But you don't think of a chair lamp, chair bookings, cookie chairs, so it's chairs from A to Z. What you see inside are thousands and thousands of small decorative chairs, bigger than dog house furniture, but too small to sit on. Some are made of unusual materials like horseshoes or toothpicks. And some are chairs made into other objects, like chair jewelry holders or chair ink wells, chair lamps, chair cookie jars. As the museum proudly describes their collection, these are chairs for a different purpose. Not for sitting, chair lamp, chair teapots, chair picture frame. It's a different world of chairs. I'm Amanda McGowan and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible and wondrous places. And today we're going inside a different world of chairs. We'll meet a woman who's been collecting miniature chairs for more than 30 years. They call her the chair lady. We'll find out how she got started with all this and why, and how an obsession to collect can kind of take over your life. It's taken a journey of its own. I had no idea it was going to go through all of this. What is it like to see people visit the museum and respond to the collection? What are some of the things that you hear from people when they come in? Wow. W-O-W. It's wow. Wow. And I just love seeing the expression on that face because a lot that have been time when the wife would come in and I had to go to the park and I'd bring the husband in because they think they don't want to see chairs. Then they come in and then they get fascinated. This is Barbara Hartzfield. She's a retired nurse and a stylish put together lady with a crisp black bob and rectangular glasses. This is her collection. And I think it's fair to say it's her obsession. She collected all of these miniature chairs, thousands of them over the past 40 or so years and she'd love to tell you about them. Well, I'll take you on a tour. That's what I use to do when people walk in. Okay. I help chairs for all major holidays. So at room number one, I show Valentine's Day chairs, Saint Patrick's Day chairs, Halloween chairs. I know this is a podcast but I really wish you could see these chairs. In fact, you might actually want to take out your phone and Google this place. There are chairs everywhere, shelves full of chairs, line the walls. There's a Christmas tree covered in chair ornaments and a bathtub that's made into a kind of garden full of chairs. I have a case with jewelry that's made out of chairs. I have a case that has horseshoe chairs so that whole case is like a country-western design. Most of these chairs are small enough to fit in the palm of their hand or to be displayed on a shelf. They are definitely not for sitting. It's just a new take on the chair. Just a new take on what you think of chairs about. These chairs are not exactly dollhouse furniture either as Barbara will point out. Dollhouse furniture is meant to be played with but most of these chairs are artisan pieces. Oh yeah, my favorite in that room is chair ink wheels. Ink wheels and chairs in the bottles are my two favorites. Well, I shouldn't say famous. That's like asking which one of your children is the favorite. But those are the ones I put more effort in shopping for. I just love that you have ink wheels and the chairs in the bottles. Just like you have shifts in bottles. You want to see a chair in the bottle? Yes. I have a whole case. Oh wow. How do they even get that in there? I don't know. The chair is huge. It fills the whole bottle. See the shape of that bottle? It almost looks like a grenade at the bottom. Yep. But see, that's why I get excited seeing something different. Right. That's totally not what I was picturing at all. I don't know. That's why I want you to see it. Of course, the first thing I wanted to know was how did Barbara get interested in miniature chairs since it is a really specific thing. She told me that it was kind of accidental. About 35 years ago, and I did not plan this at all. I was working as a psychiatric nurse, and I was really interested in pregnant models who had mental illness. Barbara started working on an article about this topic for the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. To help her get in the mindset to write, she decided to set up a little chair with a baby doll sitting in it in her workspace to get the imagination going. So when I went to shop for this one chair, I found all these unique chairs out here. So once the article was published in 1999, I decided to collect chairs that's hot on the weekend. Just here and there, they brought a big article on me in the sun, at Lama sun, in the label, because I packed a lot that goes shopping for these chairs on the weekend. I would go to the antique shelves, they used to call me and cheer later, and they would like to try to find chairs I didn't have. Were there certain things that you were looking for, like, did you have, like, rules for yourself about, okay, I'm looking for this kind of thing or this kind of thing? No, just whatever I look for. Looks like an empty town would go up. Yeah, what does it feel like when the antenna goes up? When you spot something, it's just something, joy, it's, especially when something you don't have. It's to the point where I say, I can never say I'm through a shopping, because something always comes up that I don't have. We're going to take a quick break, but after this, the collection grows a lot. So much so that the Guinness Book of World Records even gets involved. Plus, after nearly 40 years of collecting, Barbara goes to greater and greater lengths to find new and unusual chairs. And for four years, I can't begin to say I would be that chair, but I wouldn't say no if I had, that's after this. Just like that hidden wonder you found on your last vacation does not stay hidden forever. 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That's wix.com/domains. This fall, LLBIN is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. For over 100 years, LLBIN has been part of these traditions. Crunching leaves and bean boots made in Maine, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. Visit LLBIN.com to shop the fall collection, LLBIN. Be an outsider. [MUSIC PLAYING] The collectible and antique chair gallery in Stone Mountain Georgia is home to over 3,000 miniature chairs, not chairs for sitting and not dollhouse furniture, but chairs for a different purpose. That's how owner Barbara Hartzfield describes them. After she started collecting chairs back in 1991, they slowly became an obsession of hers. And by the early 2000s, she had thousands of chairs. And the collection kept growing. And people started bringing in chairs. Till I decided to see if I had the Guinness World Records. The Guinness people set a category for me on men into a chair. And I set the record for 3,000 chairs in 2008. She had so many chairs at this point that many of them were in storage by necessity. There just wasn't room in her house. See, I take a picture each time I buy a chair. So I had 27 books for pictures. But the Guinness people said my two witnesses could not look at pictures. They had to look at the chair. So I had to get all of those chairs, all of the stores, and took my little books. And they organized them around the house. So like in the kitchen, I had teapots, chuts, salt and pepper, shake, and cooking jaws. Then the DM on the coffee table, I had a chair ornament. It was growing too big for my house. That's when Barbara decided to open the museum in 2009. She mentioned before that when she first started out collecting, she didn't usually have specifics in mind. She'd buy pretty much any chair that made her collectors antenna go up. Today, she's a lot more selective. She wants pieces that will fit into the museum, both space-wise and thematically. And she really wants to hone in on pieces that are unusual or different. She's always looking for something that she's never seen before. And she's seen a lot. I was looking on Pinterest one year. And this man had a chair inside of a salt shakeer. And for four years, I tried to get him to sell me that chair. But I wouldn't sell it either if I had. So the people who put ships and bottles and chairs and bottle are called folk artists. So I just Googled a folk artist in California. He did it. He put me on chair inside of a salt shake. He put salt and peckman. He engraved my name on the back of the chair. I was so excited about him. I wrote an article in Antique Trade About Me. Another lady read about me in the paper. And she was a toothpick artist. So she created a 12-inch toothpick chair, made out of toothpicks. So it just highlights what's out there. And I never know when I find some I don't have. But I think about him now. That intrigued me. This idea that after nearly 40 years of collecting, Barbara feels like she's got just about everything. That the collection is pretty much complete. I say pretty much because Barbara will probably never really stop looking for chairs. For example, right now, she's got her eyes peeled for chair inkwell specifically. But she told me that her main focus now is on sharing the collection that she's got. And enjoying it. So I decided to write a ABC book for children. It's a pictorial book. So what I did is I walked through each room to picture two chairs for each alphabet. Chairs from ABC. So it started out only because I was writing that article. I needed that baby and chair to set the mood to write my article. So now with me doing the picture book for the chair and it's gone full circle. It started with the mom. Now it's back around with the kids. I walked around and I get excited. I can remember where I was when I bought it. And it's like a light bulb goes off. And you get so excited. See, I'm working mental health. So to me, this is still mental health. It's like a stress bus stop. So it's like a leisure. They see when people stumble in and fast something they had seen before. They have no idea what they're coming to when they come in here and they get so impressed and I get Joe out of that each week. The collectible and anti-chair gallery is about a 30-minute or so drive depending on the traffic from Atlanta in Stone Mountain Village. They are open on Friday and Saturday from 10.30 to 6. And admission is $5 for adults. Pop in and get a tour from Barbara. It might make you start to see chairs in a different way. They also have a gift shop if you need some chairs of a different purpose in your own life. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Sirius XM podcasts. The production team for this episode includes Kelly McEvers, Doug Baldinger, Camille Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manila Morales, Jerome Campbell, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Loose Fleeting. Our theme music is by Sam Tindall. If you're digging our show, give us a good review and rating wherever you get your podcasts and make sure to follow us to you never miss an episode. We have a lot of them. I'm Amanda McGowan, I'll see you next time. [MUSIC PLAYING] Sirius XM podcasts. This podcast is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Their flagship premiere card gives you four times points on all travel, earn on flights, hotels, rideshairs, and more. Plus, the flagship premiere card doesn't require you to use any booking portals and has no rewards limits. It's all the travel, none of the baggage. Visit navyfederal.org/flagshippremier to find out more. Navy Federal Credit Union, our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA Terms and Conditions apply for rewards. 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