# No two screws came from the same trip to the shop > A wooden chair, mended once with a metal bracket and screws bought at different times from different places — the chair is the only part still original. August 22, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-chair-mended-with-mismatched-screws A plain wooden chair fills the back of the shirt, drawn front-on against nothing. Every part of it reads as ordinary — until the back leg, where a metal bracket has been screwed on to hold a joint that gave way. No two of the screws in it match. The chair was made once, by whoever made it. The bracket has been fitted, and re-fitted, by however many people have owned the chair since — none of whom needed to ask the first maker anything. ## Why does the bracket matter more than the chair around it? Because everything else in the drawing is original, and the bracket is the only part with a second maker. A chair like this leaves a workshop once, every joint cut to the same plan by the same hand or the same machine. The bracket wasn't part of that plan. It went on later, screwed through wood that was never drilled for it, by someone solving a problem the original maker isn't around to solve now — which is the same shift this whole material keeps making, away from the corporate paperwork and toward [an object nobody's company still stands behind](/stories/cyberpunk-print-design). ## Why do the screws matter more than the crack they're covering? Because a matched set would mean one repair, done once, and this plainly isn't that. A slot head next to a cross head next to a hex bolt reads as several separate decisions, taken at different times, made with whatever was in a drawer rather than what a hardware list called for. One screw sits slightly proud of the wood, where a hole was started in the wrong spot and drilled again half an inch over. That's not a flaw in the drawing. It's the whole argument: a fix doesn't need to be neat to hold. ## What makes a mended chair a better subject than an undamaged one? An undamaged chair is furniture. A mended one is a record of use. A chair nobody ever had to fix has nothing to say about who sat in it. The mismatched screws are proof this one was worth keeping past the point where keeping it stopped being free — somebody chose the bracket over a replacement, more than once, over however long it took the joint to give out again somewhere else. ## Do I need permission to put a chair on a shirt? No — an ordinary wooden chair, this shape, belongs to no one. A plain rail-back kitchen chair is a form, not a design: nobody holds a claim on four legs, a seat and a rail. That changes the moment the silhouette is a specific named piece from a specific studio — a recognisable design has an owner, the same distinction [a licensed line has to draw between a phrase and the person who wrote it](/stories/quote-on-a-shirt-rights). An invented, generic chair sidesteps the question, and it matches most people's actual chair anyway, which was never a named design to begin with. ## How is this different from a shirt built around one long-running fix? It's the same idea told with more than one repair rather than one, which changes what the fix proves. [A door handle mended with a knotted loop of string](/stories/mended-and-left-mended) is a single, specific workaround that happened to outlast the thing it was meant to hold together for a weekend. The chair's bracket is that same shape of story, but the mismatched screws widen it — this isn't one clever fix, it's a chair that has needed fixing more than once, by more than one visit to a drawer of spare parts. ## Isn't a mended chair a strange thing to want on a shirt? It isn't broken in the drawing — it's fixed, which is a different state and a better one to look at. A chair mid-collapse would need explaining. A chair that's already been mended is just a chair, doing its job, with one detail that rewards a second look. Nothing about it requires the wearer to have fixed a chair themselves; the bracket reads the same way to anyone who's ever kept something going past the point a stranger would have thrown it out. ## Does it print well? Yes — a back print this size wants exactly the two colours it's using. Black carries the linework and the bracket's ironmongery; one walnut brown fills the wood, so the grain reads without needing a third tone. Distressing the print itself, not the shirt, is what keeps the woodgrain looking drawn rather than photographed — fine parallel grain lines can break up over the weave the way any fine hairline does, so [reproducing them coarser than the original is the same trade-off any linework runs into on cotton](/stories/bold-shapes-survive-fabric). Ash grey or a similar warm grey ground keeps both the wood and the black ironwork readable; anything much darker would fight the walnut brown for attention. ## How do I get one made? Describe the chair at [JustOG](/) — what gave way, what was used to fix it, and where. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). One screw still sitting a little proud of the wood, exactly where the first hole went in wrong.