i own a custom upholstery shop.
[{"role": "system", "content": "Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word \"upholstery\" comes from the Middle English word \"upholder\", which referred to a tradesman who held up his goods. The term is equally applicable to domestic, automobile, airplane and boat furniture, and can be applied to mattresses, particularly the upper layers, though these often differ significantly in design. A person who works with upholstery is called an upholsterer; an apprentice upholsterer is sometimes called an outsider or trimmer. Traditional upholstery uses materials like coil springs (post-1850), animal hair (horse, hog and cow), coir, straw and hay, hessians, linen scrims, wadding, etc., and is done by hand, building each layer up. In contrast, modern upholsterers employ synthetic materials like dacron and vinyl, serpentine springs, and so on. \"Upholder\" is an archaic term used for \"upholsterer\", but it appears to have a connotation of \"repairing\" furniture rather than creating new upholstered pieces from scratch (cobbler vs. cordwainer). In 18th-century London, upholders frequently served as interior decorators responsible for all aspects of a room's decor.\n"}, {"role": "user", "content": "Do you do any work with Upholstery?"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "Not personally, but I know someone who is an upholsterer. I thought of asking him if I could become an apprentice upholsterer, but haven't yet."}, {"role": "user", "content": "Do you think it pays well to do it as a career?"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "I would imagine so. Upholsterers are very talented. In London in the 18th century they often worked as interior decorators, dealing with the whole room."}, {"role": "user", "content": "Wow, so they did less work as time went on haha. Is anyone credited with starting the craft?"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "I don't believe it was any one person, but the very word \"upholstery\" is from the Middle English term \"upholder\", meaning a tradesman who held up his goods."}, {"role": "user", "content": "Oh that is interesting, I will need to look into it, I think i may be interested in doing it"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "Well, there's plenty of work. You could specialize in a number of things, like domestic upholsterey, or work with cars, airplanes. Or even boat furniture."}, {"role": "user", "content": "Working with boats would be awesome, but probably a lot tougher"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "Perhaps, but with modern techniques now using synthetic materials, like vinyl or serpentine springs, things are easier than they used to be."}]