A pair of Lincolnshire rush-seated bar top ladder back side chairs: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened stay rail fixed onto prominent button turnings; 3 plain domed ladders; straight turned front legs, morticed into the seat frame, missing rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

A pair of Lincolnshire rush-seated bar top ladder back side chairs WS 100

A few months after I originally found WS 86 I was lucky enough to chance upon these two near identical chairs at the Newark Antiques fair in April 2013; they too are similar to figure NE 214 at p. 159 of Dr B D Bernard Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990), chair which he attributes to South Lincolnshire. They are both in excellent condition and came a house clearance on the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire border.  Well-worn front stretchers mean they have been well-used: they have been re-rushed some time ago but without their original rushing  bars being re-attached.

© William Sergeant 2013 and 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated bar top ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened stay rail fixed onto prominent button turnings; 3 plain domed ladders; straight turned front legs, morticed into the seat frame, missing rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

Lincolnshire rush-seated bar top ladder back side chair WS 86

Many thanks to Brian Gray for drawing my attention to this chair at a south Lincolnshire auction in 2013; I was away overseas and he kindly bought this one for me in my absence. These bar topped chairs are not common, in fact it's only the third one I have ever seen*. It's also the most simple of all the Lincolnshire rush-seated chairs: those front legs are as plain as can be with no pad feet or off-centre turning involved. In Dr B D Bernard Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990) there is one very similar on page 159, figure NE 214. One of my neighbours brought a similar one at a south Lincolnshire  auction several years ago and images appear below: WS 5, 6 and WS 7:

Lincolnshire bar top rush-seated chair WS 5

Lincolnshire bar top rush-seated chair - detail of bar top stay rail and button turning WS 6

Lincolnshire bar top rush-seated chair - detail of front leg turning morticed into seat WS 7

*by January 2013

© William Sergeant 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair with 4 domed ladders, straight back poles with tapered feet, with Lincolnshire front stretcher, double rear and side stretchers, rushing bars, turned front legs with vase feet morticed into the seat frame

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair WS 186

About five years ago I was sent some photographs of two rush seated ladder back chairs that were in a house near to Spilsby. One of them was identical to the chairs in WS 59 and it is of the type that I come across quite regularly. I have been able to trace these sorts of chair to southeast Lincolnshire and I am confident that they were made by the Spikins family of chair makers in Boston and Spalding. The other chair - pictured above - had straight front legs and a front stretcher with the same pattern as the rocking chair in WS 120. Again, I believe that these sorts of chairs come from the southeast Lincolnshire: indeed the rocking chair came out of a junk shop in Bourne.  So the fact these two chairs appeared in Spilsby, an area of the county where I would only expect to find the cabriole front legged chairs like WS 157, got me wondering if I had got my origins of these chairs wrong.

It was after my talk in Spilsby in the spring of 2017 that these two chairs were brought along to my chair surgery open day. I was able to photograph them both and to inquire into their provenance. Their tale was intriguing.

Throughout the nineteenth century there was a successful banking business in Lincolnshire called the Garfit, Claypon & Co Bank that had at one time ten branches throughout the county. In 1891 it merged with another company which was later absorbed into Lloyds. It was at that time when Bartholomew Claypon Garfit - a partner in the business - sold his large house near Boston to buy a large hunting estate near to Spilsby, bringing all his furniture with him. In subsequent years this estate was broken up and part of the furniture found its way into the ownership of a descendant close to Spilsby. It was that family that had brought along these two chairs for me to see.

So my belief that these types of chairs were made in the Boston area was once again re-inforced by the finding out the provenance of them in Spilsby which definitely showed that their history could be linking to the Boston area over 100 years ago.

© William Sergeant 2017 and 2020

Lincolnshire child's originally rush-seated chair with 3 domed ladders front legs and underarm turned in one, turned arms, straight back poles with flattened finials

Lincolnshire child's originally rush-seated chair with 3 domed ladders front legs and underarm turned in one, turned arms, straight back poles with flattened finials

I have no doubt that this tiny child's chair came from the same workshop as that in WS 42. Just compare those front legs and the cross stretcher, there are even some scribe marks just beneath the front leg turnings which is typical of some  Lincolnshire workshops. However it has had a brutal past. It was once rush-seated but someone has taken away the rushing along with the rushing bars and replaced the seat with ply wood. The dealer still wanted a ridiculous price for it which I was not prepared to meet but at least I have recorded it here.  The chances are that I will probably never find another one like this.

P.S. I found out later that a dealer from Holland bought it, so it looks like it has gone overseas ...

P.P.S. UPDATE: By some strange quirk of fate this chair was offered for auction a few months later in Leominster! I wasn't going to miss it this time and I secured it for a very reasonable amount and was so pleased to add it to my collection. See WS 120 for comparison to other chairs.

© William Sergeant 2020

Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair, straight back uprights with tapering feet terminating in a plain narrow stay rail with 4 plain domed ladders, straight front legs with reduced pad feet morticed into the seat frame, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double rear and side stretchers

WS 37 Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair

Lincolnshire rush seated chairs are usually made to the most utilitarian design, just one step up from a stool but take a close look at these front legs: the person who turned them was skilled in design and manufacture; the rings, coves and quirks are crisply executed with the pad feet expertly made. Local vernacular furniture with more than a hint of sophistication.

There is similarity in the construction marks on this chair to WS 87, WS 70, WS 54 and WS 52.

©William Sergeant 2019

Bar top Lincolnshire rush-seated side chair, straight back uprights with tapering feet terminating in a plain narrow stay rail with 4 plain domed ladders, straight front legs with reduced pad feet morticed into the seat frame, front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double rear and side stretchers

WS 70 Bar top Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back side chair

Another chair from the collection of John Boden, in lovely condition and very similar to chair NE211 on p.158 of Dr B D Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990). One of a dining set of 4 side chairs and 2 carvers. The front stretcher is closer in design to chair WS 42 than any of the other Lincolnshire chairs.  There is a similarity in construction marks to WS 87, WS 54, WS 52 and WS 37.

©William Sergeant 2019

Three Lincolnshire rush-seated ladder back chairs compared:

WS 196: L-R WS 11, WS 195 and WS 59 side by side

Firstly, an apology for the slightly unsophisticated picture but it will serve to illustrate the point that I want to make.

The middle one is of a pair which appears at No 195; the RHS of the three is by far the most common Lincolnshire rush seated chair that I see: they have the appearance of being made in the first half of the 19th century; there is a pair on this site at No 59, many of which have a provenance back to the south of the county and I am certain that they were made by the Spikins families in Boston and Spalding. The LHS appears at No 11.  I have a provenance from the previous owner that goes back nearly a century and is associated with the Sleaford area. I just wonder if it was made in that town by the family of Hugh and Ann Mason. I know of only one other and that is in a village near to Spilsby.

It is immediately obvious that the front stretcher of each is identical and the pattern of the other stretchers is the same. The front legs are similar but have notable differences to make them distinct from each other. The middle one has only three back supports and the whole is strengthened by a top rail. These are the explicit design features that suggest a local pattern. What is not visible from the above picture are the implicit construction marks. All of them are exactly the same in having shallow incised rings to the back legs to aid in the drilling of the holes and all the back supports are morticed into the back legs and secured with thin metal pins. I have no doubt that the makers of these chairs were all apprenticed to workshops in the county of Lincolnshire and there they learned the same techniques for manufacturing this pattern of a chair while placing their own individual subtle design features.

© William Sergeant 2019

Lincolnshire rush-seated bar top ladder back side chair: straight back uprights with tapered feet & flattened stay rail fixed onto prominent button turnings; 3 plain domed ladders; straight turned front legs with tulip-shaped feet, morticed into the seat frame, with rushing bars; front stretcher with turnery often found in Lincolnshire, double side & rear stretchers

WS 195 Bar top rush-seated ladder back side chair

My thanks must go to James Drake, a fellow chair collector, who was kind enough to inform me about some rush-seated chairs that were being offered for sale at Gildings auctioneers in June 2018 at Market Harborough. I was able to look at an image online and decided that they were worth bidding for - there were four chairs in the lot, a pair of bar top as above, one the same as No 59 on this site and a Lancashire wavy back chair. There was only one bid, which was mine, so I managed to secure them for the princely sum of £10 plus commission.

In all my years of collecting these Lincolnshire rush-seated chairs, I have never come across these bar topped examples, indeed there is only a single image of this type in all the published literature that I am aware of, but I am in no doubt that they were produced in the county.  This chair is compared with two others at No 196.

© William Sergeant 2019

1

 

Ladder back side chair with bar top, from Leicester house clearance, same front stretcher as No. 2, No. 3 & No. 7, with the same implicit constructional markings. Probably from South Lincolnshire.

9

Rush seated ladder back chair with the same provenance, and from the same house, as chair No 7.