Lincolnshire bow back spindle back Windsor armchair stamped T SIMPSON BOSTON with 8 long spindles 6 short, crook underarm support, bell shaped seat with fantail and two angled spindles, ring and cove leg turnings with 1 lower ring x 4 with crinoline stretcher WS 130

Lincolnshire bow back spindle back Windsor armchair stamped T SIMPSON BOSTON with 8 long spindles 6 short, crook underarm support, bell shaped seat with fantail and two angled spindles, ring and cove leg turnings with 1 lower ring x 4 with crinoline stretcher WS 130

There are several outstanding features that make a Lincolnshire chair easily recognisable from a Thames Valley chair, one of which is that a Lincolnshire chair never has two spindles angled upwards from a fantail from the back of the seat. Well this chair completely disproves the rule!

Thank you to Mitch Mitchell for allowing me to record his chair here. I was allowed to make a brief inspection of this chair before photographing it and I am completely satisfied that it was made in Boston; the legs, spindles, bows and seat are exactly as you would expect so I have no doubt that it was made in the county. A further very rare feature in a Lincolnshire chair is the scribe line round the back bow: this feature is common in Nottinghamshire but almost never found in Lincolnshire.

That just leaves the extra spindles for a back support : well, perhaps this one was made as an experiment to see what was the extra expense and whether or not it made the chair more stable. It's certainly the only armchair that I have ever seen from the East Midlands with this configuration. If you look at the side chair in WS 118 you will see something similar but that chair was made in Nottinghamshire. Perhaps journeymen who had experience in Thames Valley workshops made both chairs.

© William Sergeant 2020

Nottinghamshire bow back Windsor side chair stamped Nicholson Rockley with 6 long spindles, bell-shaped seat with fantail and 2 spindles at an angle, with ring and cove leg turnings with 1 lower ring x 4 WS 118

Nottinghamshire bow back Windsor side chair stamped Nicholson Rockley with 6 long spindles, bell-shaped seat with fantail and 2 spindles at an angle, with ring and cove leg turnings with 1 lower ring x 4 WS 118

The wonderful thing about collecting chairs is finding something special! I remember having a conversation with a dealer about memorizing the designs of chairs in Dr B D Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990) and then searching for something out of the ordinary.  He was very dismissive and likened me to a train spotter for ticking off the pictures. He completely missed the point: the fun of the search! Anyway, I know this is not a Lincolnshire chair but its very existence is worth recording here because if you look in Cotton's book there are many pictures of the superb Windsor chairs that were made in Rockley, in Nottinghamshire, but there is no mention or picture of a side chair. They were thought not to exist. Well feast your eyes on this: the ironic thing is that this chair spent several years in an antique shop in Newark and I must have walked past it many times. There was nothing about it to suggest to me that it was a local chair and I never even stopped to inspect it. Side chairs with a fantail seat and 2 angled spindles joined into the hoop are a standard design in the Thames Valley and, as far as I am aware, this is the only East Midlands side chair featuring this design and construction method. 

Only when a fellow collector told me that it was stamped with the maker's name did I inspect it closely. 

Nottinghamshire bow back Windsor side chair stamped Nicholson Rockley  WS 117

Imagine my surprise when I saw Nicholson Rockley. Because it had been unsold for so long I think the shop owner was really pleased to let me have it at a very much reduced rate. The lesson for me and anyone else reading this is simple: never ever walk past a chair without inspecting it thoroughly for signs of who made it.

PS there is one other armchair from Lincolnshire recorded with a fantail and 2 angled spindles which will be posted tomorrow (update: now to be found here).

© William Sergeant 2020