Janis Nicolay

Gallant & Jones team Gwyneth Parks (left) and Tamra Devine scout for deck-chair fabric, with such eye-catchers as Red Wharf (top) and Trina Turk’s orange geometric Caligata.

The blue-and-white-striped foldable fabric deck chair is almost as iconically British as high tea, bangers and mash, and double-decker buses. So why has the adaptable design never really made it to this side of the Atlantic? It’s all the more surprising considering the design seems custom-made for Vancouver—not just because of the large number of Brit expats who live here, but because of how well-suited the portable seats are to our beachside setting, unpredictable weather, and condo-scaled patios.

But that’s all changing as two local women—wielding heavy machinery, chic fabrics, and more than a little knowledge of Jolly Old—launch Gallant & Jones’s stylish new update on the classic English deck chair.

About a year ago, Tamra Devine was visiting her husband’s relatives in London, and on a walk beneath the Waterloo Bridge, she and her family came across the striped chairs. She suddenly realized she’d never seen them outside of Europe.

Back home in Vancouver, she floated the idea of making them to her best friend Gwyneth Parks, a transplant from Wales who has a background in textile and design. She also, it turned out, felt nostalgic about the chairs.

“As soon as I told Gwyn about it, she knew exactly what I was talking about—she went to university in Brighton,” says Devine, referring to the famous British seaside town. The partners are sitting amid strips of wood and machinery in the small Burnaby workshop where they make their designs. “She said, ”˜You don’t even know this about me, but I love those deck chairs.’ ”

The pair had been looking for ideas to start up a creative business, and realized they had hit upon the ideal project. Last summer, they set out researching fabrics, woods, and, the history of the collapsible chairs.

“They’re about 200 years old, and originally they were designed to go on cruise liners or yachts or boats,” Parks explains. “Then people started taking them to the beach or to old garden parties—you see them in old photos with people in big hats and dresses.”

“If you go to these little beach towns today, you can rent them for £5,” Devine adds. “Or you’ll see them in little groupings in Hyde Park.”

But the Gallant & Jones team (who based the company moniker on their Brit-sounding maiden names) wanted to put an artful new twist on the old design. Instead of the traditional pale wood used for the British versions, they opted for a hardy yet sophisticated North American black-walnut frame. The dark hue sets off vibrant fabrics that go far beyond the blue-and-white classic: bold stripes in combos like turquoise and corals or purples and lime greens, as well as sleek black and tan; cool geometrics in crisp orange or grey on white, by designer Trina Turk; vintage-look chinoiserie vines and pheasants in black or blue; and tribal patterns in hot pink and lime.

“We have 20 fabrics now—I’m not sure how!” Devine says with a laugh. “We kept falling in love with fabrics.”

Eventually, the two hope to start printing their own textiles.

Here at the workshop, they craft two separate designs. The beach chair ($175) has a permanently attached UV–resistant, acrylic outdoor fabric and a more rustic black walnut. The Garden chair ($280 to $400) has a smoother finish and interchangeable fabric slings with matching pillows. Both styles recline to different levels and fold up flat for storage.

The Gallant & Jones space is outfitted with the tools of their trade: table saws, planers, chop saws, routers—all familiar machinery to Devine, whose parents run a finger-jointing mill in northern B.C.

Once they’ve cut the pieces to construct their chairs, Parks jokes, “Then we sand for about 50 million years.”

In the run-up to spring, the Gallant & Jones team has been pushing production, unveiling the line at a recent Portobello West market and launching a Web site where they sell the entire line. Look for them at Park Royal’s Home & Garden Weekend April 17 and 18 from noon to 5 p.m.

“We are out here [at the workshop] every waking minute,” admits Devine, who manages to juggle her new enterprise along with raising three boys—a two-year-old and three-year-old twins. No wonder that, for now, they contract out the sewing of the chairs.

The business may have just launched, but the duo has already found buyers who are both nostalgic for the old chairs and creative about new uses for them.

“One English lady was going to put it on her deck; another went to a floating home in Ladner,” Parks says.

The pair say the chairs are as appropriate for camping (and a lot more stylish than your canvas collapsibles) as they are for cramped condo balconies, where you can unfold them when you want to take in some fresh air. They’ve just launched little foldable footstools to match.

Devine and Parks have been careful to use wood from sustainable forests and ecofriendly teak-oil stain. In addition, five bucks from each sale goes to the tree-planting charity Love Trees. The duo has made the line as local as possible, right down to some of the different fabric designs’ made–in–B.C. names: the Locarno, the Qualicum, and the Kootenay.

In other words—with apologies to Brighton Beach—the chairs have taken on a West Coast identity all their own.