Squared crest rail East Anglian Windsor side chair with 6 laths, shaped underarms fixed to back frame and shaped underarm supports,bell seat, single ring and cove leg turnings x 4, lower ring x 4, crinoline stretcher - WS 230

East Anglian Windsor Chair WS230

Many readers of my comments on this site will be familiar with Mendlesham Windsor chairs, made in Suffolk. However, East Anglia does not have a great tradition of producing Windsor chairs. This is mainly due to the production of "Hollow-seated chairs" there. When this chair was offered for sale at the auction house in Bury St Edmunds in Dec 2019, I decided to add it to my collection. The lot notes stated that it was made mainly from fruitwood with an elm seat and I was impressed by the elegant combination of the skill of wood turning and cabinet making for the back support and arms. What is not immediately apparent is the fluted moulding on all the backsplats, a feature that appears on No. 142 & No. 143, both of which were purchased in East Anglia. The front legs, while having the ring and cove turnery pattern well up towards the seat, as most Thames Valley chairs have, also have a feature that I've seen on othere chairs that I have recorded from that area. Namely, double incised rings to denote where to drill the holes for the stretchers.

© William Sergeant 2024

Unusual Lincolnshire scroll back Windsor armchair stamped Taylor, bar back, pierced cross rail, turned lower rail, straight seat sides, ring & cove front leg turnings with lower ring, plain back, H stretcher, shaped underarms, sawn and scrolled back uprights WS 82

Unusual Lincolnshire scroll back Windsor armchair stamped Taylor, bar back, pierced cross rail, turned lower rail, straight seat sides, ring & cove front leg turnings with lower ring, plain back, H stretcher, shaped underarms, sawn and scrolled back uprights WS 82

Windsor armchair signed TAYLOR GRANTHAM from the fine collection of Brian Gray. This an enigma as it has many features that you would not associate with an East Midlands chair. This is the only chair of this pattern that has ever been recorded and is unusual for two reasons. Firstly, it has very few turned components: more like a chair that a cabinet maker would produce, and secondly the design is what I would expect to be produced in the Thames Valley region. It demonstrates that there are probably other design of chairs that were produced by the Lincolnshire chair makers and as yet undiscovered and unrecorded.

© William Sergeant 2015 and 2019

Glasgow pattern joined armchair with curved top rail, central shaped cross splat, scrolled arms, shaped underarms fixed into side rails, dyked board seat, stretchers x 4, inner & rear tapered legs

WS 144 Scottish joined armchair, Glasgow pattern 

If you thought this site was going to entirely devoted to Lincolnshire chairs then you may be disappointed - or perhaps pleasantly surprised.  This chair was most probably made north of Glasgow & Edinburgh, in lowland Scotland.

How do I know that, I hear you say? Well, just look at the wood of the broad curved top rail, the centrally placed cross splat (with both upward and downward shaping) and the right hand curved back upright are made out of - they contain dark heart wood and light yellow sapwood.   Only one wood like that: Laburnum! There was a strong and well-recorded tradition of the use of Cytisus alpinus (also Laburnum alpinum) from the late 1700s in lowland Perthshire. Also the seat is counter sunk into the rails - known as a dyked seat - and you can just make out the 45° degree angle the corner of the seat board is cut at the top of the legs tapered on the inner and rear faces; both are Scottish traditions.  The scrolled arms and curved underarm supports, fitted to the side seat rails are made from elm and the seat boards from oak. Front and rear stretchers are set higher than those at the sides.

For further examples of these Glasgow pattern chairs, see Dr B D Cotton Scottish Vernacular Furniture (Thames & Hudson 2008) pp.178-188.

I happened across this wonderful piece of vernacular furniture at the Stamford Antique centre described as a yew wood country chair.

© William Sergeant 2019

Squared back East Anglian Windsor armchair with 7 staggered long spindles, shaped underarms fixed to back frame and shaped underarm supports, bell seat, single ring leg turnings x 4, H stretcher with darts

WS 143 Squared back East Anglian Windsor armchair

There is absolutely nothing about this chair to associate it with Lincolnshire but it is just such an elegant chair that it deserves a wider audience.  I had seen it briefly before and asked its owner to bring it along to my Chair Study day on 22 September 2014.

The most outstanding feature, which is not immediately obvious from this picture, are the staggered back spindles; if you look where they meet the seat you see they are not in line. The next important item to note is that the upper half could well have been made by a cabinet maker and the lower half by a turner. The overall appearance is similar to the Mendlesham chairs that appear in Dr B D Cotton’s The English Regional Chair (1990) pp.246-256. However there are some notable subtle differences - every one in Cotton's book has double top bars and none of the vertical back spindles reach all the way down to the seat board whereas this chair has a single top bar and the vertical spindles are let into the seat. One overiding feature tends to unite the Mendlesham chairs: it is the incise mark on the legs to denote where the stretchers are to be drilled and let in - those marks appear on this chair and No 142.

© William Sergeant 2019

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Windsor armchair signed TAYLOR GRANTHAM. This is the only chair of this pattern that has ever been recorded and is unusual for two reasons. Firstly, it has very few turned components, like a cabinet maker would produce, and secondly the design is what I would expect to be produced in the Thames Valley region. I have included in this exhibition as it demonstrates that there are probably other design of chairs that were produced by the Lincolnshire chair makers and as yet undiscovered and unrecorded.