Payton Hillebrand loves antiques.

So when the Central Barber Shop owner/barber was offered to buy an old barber’s chair last spring, she didn’t waste time deciding on it. Hillebrand bought it for $2,000 from Bellflower resident M.R. Moke.

“It was a nice day outside,” Hillebrand said. “I remember when my father-in-law, my husband and I came out to his house. We looked at it and decided on a price.”

Moke kept the chair for 60 years before selling it to Hillebrand. Moke is one of Hillebrand’s customers.

“She does a fine job,” Moke said. “She’s got a little barber shop in a small town. What better place for the public to see the vintage of the chair like that.”

The chair, which is currently sitting next to the front window at the barber shop, was made in 1881 by Ernest Koken and Louis Boppert, who were partners in the barber chair business in the late 1800s.

“I never heard of a Koken and Boppert before,” said Hillebrand, who purchased the Central Barber Shop from Roy Yeager in 2019. “When you look up old Koken chairs, you get a completely different looking chair. I didn’t know what that chair looked like before I went and looked at it. Even though I tried to do some research on it, I never found anything. So I’m going to assume that they are pretty rare to find, especially in that condition.”

The chair also has a big hole in it. The hole came from a shooting of a barber in the 1800s in Wichita, Kan.

That’s how Moke bought it when he was in Wichita in the 1960s.

Moke went to a car show when he found an elderly couple selling old cars. After buying two Essex Coupes from the late 1920s, he noticed that the couple was keeping the old barber’s chair in a barn.

“I said, ‘What’s the deal on the chair?’ The old man said his grandfather owned a barber shop in Wichita in the 1800s and they shot him in the back. So they took it home and kept it in the family,” Moke said. “I said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ He said, ‘It’s junk.’ I said, ‘I would like to have it.’ So I got the chair from him.”

Hillebrand, a 2017 Montgomery County graduate, also has three barber chairs in her shop that were made by Koken, who was a German immigrant and lived in St. Louis.

“He started out by making shaving mugs,” Hillebrand said. “He would sell them to local barbers. The story was he would see all of these barbers struggling. The chairs don’t move. They would only lean back. So he would see all of these barbers struggling and walking around. So he started coming up with the concept of chairs that move and chairs that lean back.”

When Moke found out about the three Koken chairs, he told Hillebrand about the Koken and Boppert chair he kept for a long time.

“I told them they were antiques and I told them they were Koken,” Hillebrand said. “He said, ‘Well, I have one that said Koken and Boppert.’ I said, ‘You’re blowing smoke old man because I don’t know what that means.’”

Hillebrand bought the old chair in March. The owner/barber said it has impressed many of her customers.

“I really enjoy it,” Hillebrand said. “I get a lot of questions about it. I get a lot of people wanting to know the story. I have a lot of people who think that’s really neat.”

So far, Hillebrand hasn’t done any haircuts on that chair.

“I’m very protective over it,” Hillebrand said.