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

Squared back East Anglian Windsor side chair with 7 staggered long spindles, framed back, bell seat, single ring leg turnings x 4, H stretcher with darts

WS 142 squared back East Anglian Windsor side chair 

This is the side chair that goes with No 143. If you study the Mendlesham chairs in Dr B D Cotton’s The English Regional Chair (1990) there is only a single side chair shown which makes this worthy of inclusion here just on that fact alone.

Many thanks to Tony and Jan from Suffolk for allowing me to publish these pictures here.

© 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