Jack White is known around the world for his musical chops, but did you know that he was an upholstery apprentice in the 1990s and owned his own upholstery business before music stardom came to call? 

And, in fact, he still does upholstery work for some elite clients.

White started working as an upholstery apprentice in 1991 and hung up his shingle in 1996. With a dedicated ground floor studio at the Pioneer Building in Detroit, he would support himself almost exclusively from the profession for years before closing up shop in 1998 to focus more intently on music and touring.

White, with bands including the White Stripes and later The Raconteurs, has sold more than 5 million albums and he has won 12 Grammy Awards. 

While White may have stopped doing upholstery as a “job” he’s never stopped doing the work. In the more than 20 years since, he has kept an operational upholstery shop in his house or on his property. His business, Third Man Upholstery is now located in Nashville, Tenn.

With its name taken from the 1949 Carol Reed film “The Third Man,” the immediate inspiration behind the moniker was the fact that Jack White was the third upholsterer from the 1200 block of Ferdinand Street in Southwest Detroit -- the street where he grew up. 

One of his furniture jobs was the Triple Chair 78, which, according to the company's Website, was a found chair that contained no fabric, no padding, joints that were weak and unglued, remnants of jute webbing and wood finish that was long ago wasted away.

The piece features three chairs joined together. Utilizing fabric from the Knoll Furniture and Design company, he built six wood frames using red oak, traditional dowel joints and wood glue to upholster. The frames were then mounted from behind with screws without ripping the fabric. The color pattern was an homage to the doors at the Third Man’s studios.

To finish the piece, he melted down antique 78 rpm records – including “Waiting on the Robert E. Lee” by Al Jolson, “Ill Wind” by Lena Horne, and “Blue Orchid Fox Trot” by Sammy Kaye – and used them to refinish the wood in black.

White re-glued all of the joints of the chair and clamped them overnight. He sanded as much of the old finish off as he could and then began the task of applying the old records in liquid form to the piece, He covered the piece with six coats of shellac. He also applied three of the record labels that survived underneath the chair for posterity.

With the fickleness of the music business, it is also good to have something to fall back on, or at least to sit on.