'Shroom

This is probably the oddest piece of furniture I own and I love it in all its 70s-ness. It is a footrest I affectionately call the mushroom. The top is that 70s goldish green (or is it greenish gold?) and the bottom was a heavily lacquered thick wood, probably oak, that a former girlfriend painted green. The top of the 'shroom has lost of bit of its verve, as the stuffing has become dry and over the years has begun falling out in powdered form from holes (?) in the underside that I've had to cover with packing tape. Now it's a bit lopsided and the more charming for it.
It's really a key part of the old and new, warm and cool dichotomy that runs this place. Too much like it would look like the Brady Bunch, but a couple things like this gives the place a warmth and eccentricity that I like. It's small but because of its general oddness, people really notice it and a) like it or b) hate it. It's also a reminder of what the 70s were really like for most people, that is while there was a lot of Danish modern around, even in the 'burbs, there was also this, and so it's my way of keeping something real. It brings to mind a word like coziness, but since that has schmaltzy connotations, the Dutch word gezellig is better; it's a warmth, a coziness that lacks the bourgeois stuffiness usually associated with either of those words. Gezellig (roughly pronounced "heh-zell-ick") is the coziness of a Amsterdam coffee house (where coffee is the last thing on the mind) or the music of Erik Satie. It's comfortable but not banal, warm and friendly but not naive. By itself, the mushroom stool may scream kitsch, but in a room with contrasting shapes, colors and sounds it's another texture that adds interest and a soft place to put one's feet.