Vintage sofa from Casa Loma, Toronto, is the best seat in his house

It’s dressed in a sartorially splendid leopard print. And it has supported a century’s worth of posteriors, dating back to the hey days of Toronto’s famous Casa Loma. It’s difficult to say just where the Victorian sofa resided in the castle, as the mansion, completed in 1914 by business tycoon and financier Sir Henry Pellatt, has 98 rooms.

The sofa’s current owner John Wright calls it “part of the family,” and has the sensuously curved piece in a place of honour in his living room.

“I used to lay on it as a teenager to watch TV,” recalls the antiquarian, who’s in his late 70s.

He’s not sure how his parents got their hands, er, bottoms on it, but it arrived in the family home in Welland sometime after Pellatt ran into money trouble and had to forfeit his dream castle in the 1920s.

The appeal of good-quality oldtimers, such as the sofa, is in their “warmth and history,” explains Wright, a longtime collector and seller of antiques who now lives in Erin, a small town northwest of Toronto.

Growing up surrounded by them, the aficionado has an “inbred” love of antiques and keeps amassing more and more of them.

“There’s a lot of stuff here,” Wright says of his third-floor apartment in what used to be his parents’ house. They rebuilt their home in the ’60s following a fire on the property his family moved to in 1948.

There’s no space left, what with all the artwork, collectibles and inherited pieces he’s artfully placed on the walls, floors or surfaces. The septuagenarian, who began collecting in his teens, is partial to silver, black amethyst, crystal and the work of certain Canadian artists, including W.T. Wood, “good friend” Lillian Milne, and his grandmother.

He has a deep-seated “passion” for chairs.

He mentions coming across a trio of discarded Hepplewhites in grey velvet that didn’t even need restoring or reupholstering (which his finds often do).

“The side of the road is very lucrative,” remarks Wright, a frequent yard-saler and auction-goer from way back.

The rustic drive shed behind his home, where he runs a weekend antique shop called “The Wright Attitude,” is packed to the rafters with things he likes.

Indeed, he says he only stocks things he likes.

In turn, “people who come in find things they like,” he notes, mentioning a Chippendale settee he sold recently. “Three women came in and bought it right off.”

The Wright Attitude is “not a junk shop,” the proprietor points out; customers are drawn to the vignettes he designs to showcase the trinkets and treasures. And it doesn’t hurt that there’s “a lot of wiggle room” in his prices.

Wright, who is retired from a long career in customer service with an airline, opened the “shoppe in a shed” four years ago after relocating a few times since starting his antique business in 1994.

It’s unlikely he’ll make room on the shop’s rug-covered floor for his cherished Victorian sofa. Originally upholstered in red and gold, it was later recovered in green, then rose-coloured, velvet. Wright, who’s wild about animal prints, had it redone in faux leopard, which accentuates the sculptured lines of its wood frame.

Although the vintage piece is well-used, it’s not what you’d call an old softie. But “with pillows at your back, it’s very comfortable,” he says.

Fit for a king in his castle.

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