... on cushion archaeology.

I was about to toss an old floral cushion into the bin - it recently came to me from my grandmother's place and although I did have plans to sit on it (and the perfect chair to go with it), it proved to be a great source of dust, no matter how much I whacked it or vacuumed it. It had some strange gravelly texture within. Before I tossed it, I undertook to answer the question... 'what in hell is in this cushion?'

To my delight I discovered that the cushion had been re-covered six times! The further in I got the more rotten the fabrics became, and right in the middle was a blackened foam-rubber pad that had degraded so much that lots of little hard bits had fallen off, forming the gravelly loose bits I could feel.

No wonder it was so dusty! Although it's made me sneeze quite a bit, investigating this cushion has made my day!