or that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined and which no one bothered to replace

[Coffee Break]

Hello everyone. I encountered this expression, "or that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined and which no one bothered to replace", but am struggling to understand it. Could you please let me know what it means in the following sentences:

We stepped out of the car and made our way to the front door. But then Clara had a change of heart and decided to enter by way of a side door, and sure enough, there was the river. We stood outside a large porch with a wrought-iron table and chairs whose cushions had either been removed for the winter season or that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined and which no one bothered to replace. But the wooden path down to the boat dock seemed to have been rebuilt recently—so these people did care for the house, and the cushions on the porch were probably being carefully stowed away during winter.

- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, Third Night

This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. This novel is narrated by the nameless male protagonist. The protagonist meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Two days after the party, Clara came to the protagonist's house at 8 o'clock in the morning and drove him to her friend, who knows a lot about recorded music. At the garden of her friend's house, the protagonist notices the garden table and chairs.

Here, I wonder what the underlined expression means, especially how this part could be parsed.
I understand that "whose cushions" might probably modify "chairs"... But then I wonder how "that" in "that disuse and sheer age" can be connected and how and where "which" in "which no one" is connected.

I would very much appreciate your help.

 

[Tarheel]

There are several layers of weirdness here. First, they get out of the car and go inside. But they're not inside: they're outside. And nobody sees anything weird about that. Which is itself weird. Then he speculates (to himself) about something that isn't there and might never have been there. As, for your question, the whole phrase is "with a wrought-iron table and chairs whose cushions had either been removed for the winter season or that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined and which no one had bothered to replace". As I said, he's speculating about something he can't see except in his imagination. You can't understand the meaning of a sentence by picking it apart.

I am a little confused about the picnic table. Is it on the porch or in the garden?

He thinks the cushions (if they were ever there in the first place) must have worn out, and they hadn't been replaced yet.

(She picked him up and drove him to her Friend's house.)

 

[Ostap]

First, you have the "either ... or ... " structure:
whose cushions had either been removed for the winter season or that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined and which no one bothered to replace.

Second, you can parse the sentence like this:

We stood outside a large porch with a wrought-iron table and chairs whose cushions
(1) ... had either been removed for the winter season
(2) ... or that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined
(3) ... and which no one bothered to replace.

(2) and (3) are relative clauses modifying "cushions". "That" is a relative pronoun referring back to "cushions". For grammatical clarity, let's omit (1), and then we can omit "or that":

We stood outside a large porch with a wrought-iron table and chairs whose cushions disuse and sheer age had totally ruined and which no one bothered to replace.

 

[Pears In Juice]

I'm not a fan of using "whose" to refer to inanimate objects, even though the correct alternative is the clunky "of which" -- but it would actually make the sentence flow better, I think.

We stood outside a large porch with a wrought-iron table and chairs the cushions of which had either been removed for the winter season, or which disuse and sheer age had totally ruined and which no one bothered to replace.

 

[Coffee Break]

@Tarheel, @Ostap and @Pears In Juice,

Thank you very much for the explanations!

I am a little confused about the picnic table. Is it on the porch or in the garden?

I think the table and the chairs are on the porch! Probably it is because I wrote the explanation in a confusing way; I am sorry about that.

So "whose" modifies "chairs", and "that" and "which" here modify "cushions". And "that" in front of "or" is inserted to indicate that the cushions are the object of ruining. "That" was necessary because cushions became an object from being the subject of being removed in the previous clause.

So, as for the cushions:
(1) either cushions had been removed for the winter season
(2) or cushions that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined
(3) and cushions which no one bothered to replace.

I guess it became confusing for me to understand because "either" is inserted between "had been"... But then "that" is inserted after "or" because of the change of the grammatical function of "cushions", from the subject to the object!

One strange thing about this part is that, when (1) is omitted, it becomes "chairs whose (=of which) cushions that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined"... I thought that a complete sentence (with a subject and a verb) should come after "whose", but then there is only "cushions" left", so I am a little confused.

I sincerely appreciate your help.

 

[Ostap]

So "whose" modifies "chairs", and "that" and "which" here modify "cushions". And "that" in front of "or" is inserted to indicate that the cushions are the object of ruining. "That" was necessary because cushions became an object from being the subject of being removed in the previous clause.

The writer simply chose to complicate matters. He could've gone the easier and logical way, making the parts within the "either" and "or" structure parallel, in the passive voice:

... whose cushions had either been removed for the winter season or (had been) totally ruined by disuse and sheer age...

One strange thing about this part is that, when (1) is omitted, it becomes "chairs whose (=of which) cushions that disuse and sheer age had totally ruined"... I thought that a complete sentence (with a subject and a verb) should come after "whose", but then there is only "cushions" left", so I am a little confused.

If you remove (1), then you also have to remove "or that", as I showed in #3: whose cushions disuse and sheer age had totally ruined ...

 

[Coffee Break]

@Ostap,

Thank you very much for the explanation.
So what is confusing here is how there are passive and active voices together in this sentence!

And I learned that, like "whose cushions disuse and sheer age had totally ruined", "whose" can be followed by only a noun ("cushions that had been ruined...") rather than a whole sentence ("cushions had been ruined by...").

I sincerely appreciate your help, for letting me understand.

 

[Ostap]

@Ostap,

Thank you very much for the explanation.
So what is confusing here is how there are passive and active voices together in this sentence!

And I learned that, like "whose cushions disuse and sheer age had totally ruined", "whose" can be followed by only a noun ("cushions that had been ruined...") rather than a whole sentence ("cushions had been ruined by...").

I sincerely appreciate your help, for letting me understand.

If "whose" is a determiner and not a pronoun, like in this sentence, then it should be followed by a noun. But, "whose cushions had been ruined" is an absolutely normal phrase, where "(whose) cushions" is the subject and "had been ruined" is the verb. In fact, by adding "that" you make it more complicated.