Lincolnshire medium bow back Windsor armchair stamped TAYLORS with quatrefoil and fleur de lys splat, 6 long spindles, 8 short, crook underarms, bell shaped seat, ring and cove front leg turnings, plain back legs, H stretcher with darts WS 194

Lincolnshire medium bow back Windsor armchair stamped TAYLORS with quatrefoil and fleur de lys splat, 6 long spindles, 8 short, crook underarms, bell shaped seat, ring and cove front leg turnings, plain back legs, H stretcher with darts WS 194

A long time ago, a fellow collector of Lincolnshire Windsor chairs had mentioned to me that he had a couple of stamped Taylor chairs in his collection. I had never seen them and wasn't overly interested as I have my own chairs signed by the same maker. However, on a recent visit to his house, I noticed this chair above - I knew that it was made by William Taylor who signed his chairs TAYLORS. I commented that this must be a new addition, whereon he replied that he had told me about it years ago. I had misinterpreted what he had said; I thought he meant Taylor not TAYLORS! The difference is subtle but so important.

I know that William Taylor signed chairs from his workshop as he states the same in an advert in the Stamford Mercury- WS 166 here - and that his signed chairs are very rare. My research has revealed that he left the security of his mother's workshop in December 1811 to set up his own business; at the same time he took on the apprentice William Shirley senior who was halfway through his 7-year tuition having started it under John Taylor.

This chair encapsulates so many features regarding my research. With the help of Chris Goodwin, who is a descendant of the Taylors of Grantham, I can reveal that William Taylor gave up chairmaking on the 7th October 1815 to work for the Post Office as a mail coach guard, something he did for the next 30 years. This means that this chair can be precisely dated to the 4 years before Oct 1815. The implications of this are profound - no other writer on this subject has been able to confirm when the backsplat and H stretcher were introduced into the design of Lincolnshire chairs but this is firm date evidence.

The chair itself is made entirely out of ash wood, having a thick seat and of robust construction, weighing in at an impressive 15 pounds - this chair was made to last. The backsplat has a particularly pleasing design motif. The seat is flared towards the front to give more room to the front legs which leads to an elegant well-balanced design.

But the most outstanding discovery for me was that this collector had been lucky to purchase two of these chairs, in the same lot, from an auction house in Cumbria.

© William Sergeant 2018 and 2020

Lincolnshire medium bow back Windsor armchair probably William Taylor, with 3 quatrefoil and flea de lys pierced splat, 6 long spindles, 8 short, crook underarms, bell-shaped seat, ring and cove front leg turnings, plain back legs, crinoline stretcher WS 165

Lincolnshire medium bow back Windsor armchair probably William Taylor, with 3 quatrefoil and flea de lys pierced splat, 6 long spindles, 8 short, crook underarms, bell-shaped seat, ring and cove front leg turnings, plain back legs, crinoline stretcher WS 165

Shaped elm seat, two inches thick , chamfered under edges. Back support all ash wood except cherry splat . Eight short and six long spindles. Distinctive quatrefoil pattern on splat. Four blind square pins on back bow and five on the arm bow let in from the back.

Ash wood front legs with typical Lincolnshire ring and cove decoration, slightly shortened, one with evidence of torn fibres from cleaving blank. One plain ash back leg and one elm replacement leg and two elm replacement short stretchers. Ash crinoline stretcher. Weight : 13 ¼ lbs.

This chair was made by William Taylor, of that I have no doubt. If you look in Dr B D Cotton's The English Regional Chair (1990) at figure NE 28 on p. 118 you will see an identical chair which is signed Taylors Grantham. That is the stamp of William Taylor of Grantham. Also on the original rear leg there is an incised mark to show where the hole centre is to be drilled for the cross stretcher. I have only seen one chair with this constructional aid before and that is on chair WS 126 and if you look at that chair you will see that it is also signed Taylors Grantham.

© William Sergeant 2015 and 2020

Unstamped medium bow back Lincolnshire Windsor armchair, crook underarm supports, 6 long spindles, 2 x 4 underarm spindles, ring and cove front leg turnings with single lower ring & plain back legs, crinoline stretcher

WS 137 Lincolnshire Windsor bow back armchair

Well crafted and full of understated elegance - a typical early nineteenth century Lincolnshire windsor chair - but we do not know who made it. The outstanding feature of this chair is the quatrefoil motif in the splat; they are rarely seen. The seat and most of the components are made from ash, the splat probably from fruitwood. However the two steam bent bows are made from a wood that I am not familiar with and could even have been constructed from hazel. This chair is in the collection of Brian Gray.

I have made the bold statement that this is a Lincolnshire Windsor chair, even though it does not have a makers stamp on it to verify where it was made. I have been asked many times how I know if a chair was made in Lincolnshire and after giving some talks to groups of people this year my thoughts have focused on answering that question. The first reason I am so confident I am able to recognise them is that I have handled a significant number of signed chairs and a pattern emerges that is common to all Lincolnshire chairs. Always remember that the chairmaker has left his finger prints over every component, whether on purpose or not (these could be explicit or implicit features).

The first most obvious feature that can be spotted at some distance is the design of the legs, namely a ring and cove on the front legs (later to become just two rings) and plain back legs, tapered towards both ends. The lack of decoration on the back legs just typifies the frugal attitude these makers had to the manufacture of their chairs to remain competitive with other chairmakers. On the front leg the ring design tends to be small whereas the cove is flat and elongated (made with a gouge chisel rather than a nail chisel).

The next pointer I look for is the seat - I reckon that at least 85% of signed Lincolnshire chairs have seats made from the ash tree (the other 15% are made from elm). The early makers used flaired seats to get the front legs further apart and I have yet to see a Lincolnshire chair with the legs let right through seat (a common practice on Thames Valley chairs).

The design of the back splat holds no interest to me at all - I have not come across any association of the fretted design with the maker. However, it appears to me that all the Lincolnshire makers made spindle backed chairs with no splat but where there is a splat it is let through the back bow, not let into the front of the bow that is so very common on the southern chairs. I have yet to see a Lincolnshire chair with a roundel or cartwheel motif on the splat though I believe ones may exist.

Chairs from other regions usually have a scribe mark on the backbow and sometimes around the edge of the seat; I would not expect to see such decoration on a Lincolnshire chair - remember the word to describe these chairs is frugal with no unnecessary decoration.

Finally the most telling design feature that distinguishes East Midlands chairs from their southern counterparts is the joint where the backbow meets the arm bow: Lincolnshire makers tapered the back bow like the sharpening of a pencil whereas the Thames Valley makers seemed invariably to have been taught to cut a square shoulder which sits on the arm bow  Its always the first point that catches my eye whenever I come across a new chair to inspect.

A fuller discussion of what distinguishes a Lincolnshire chair from a Nottinghamshire chair or a Thames Valley one, written several years after I made these observations, may be found here.

© William Sergeant 2014 & 2019