Antique Armchairs
A chair with arms, made for sitting at length rather than at table, from 17th-century joined oak through Victorian mahogany and leather to 1930s birch.
Antique Armchairs
Two broad families run through the category. Show-frame chairs, where the timber does the work: Windsor stick-backs, wainscot chairs, elbow and desk chairs, open armchairs. And upholstered seat furniture, where the frame is buried: wing, button-back, bergère, club and salon chairs. Mahogany, walnut, oak, elm, ash and birch are the timbers named most.
The likeliest thing you'll meet is a named-timber armchair of the 19th century, mahogany more often than anything else. Victorian and "19th Century" between them cover a great many listings. But the strongest habit in the titles is the pair: just over a quarter carry the word, so two chairs offered together is nearly as common as one alone.
Windsors form a branch of their own, around a tenth of titles, named by form (smoker's bow, comb back, hoop back, wheel back) and by place - Oxford, Thames Valley, Yorkshire, Buckinghamshire, North Country, Welsh. French and Continental work adds another tenth, with fauteuils and bergères dominant and a distinct Swedish strand of satin birch and bleached oak, often Art Deco pairs.
Dating is coarse more often than not. "19th Century" alone covers thousands of listings and "Victorian" a further large block; read those as ranges. Where a title gives a circa year, c1780 or c1835, the dealer is committing to something narrower. The dated field as a whole runs from 1635 to 1960.
What Separates Them
Number matters as much as anything. A single chair sits below a pair, and a pair below a set. Sets of four, six, eight, twelve and sixteen all turn up on Sellingantiques, and the largest and earliest of them sit at the very top of the range. Dealers are careful with the language too, separating a true pair from a matched pair, a close matched pair or a very near pair.
Then the name. Howard is the most-repeated word of its kind in titles, but a good deal of that is "Howard style" or "in the manner of", which occupies the middle ground. Stamped or attributed Howard & Sons and Gillows chairs sit well above the general run. The Howard model names - Bridgewater, Grafton, Willoughby, Woodstock, Ingleby - form a small vocabulary of their own.
Timber, age and decoration do the rest. Yew Windsors, satin birch and figured walnut hold the upper half while elm and beech sit lower. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century wainscot and George II frames cluster at the top, with Georgian-style revivals of 1900 to 1930 below them. Carving, inlay, paint, giltwood and ormolu mounts all push upward.
Antique Armchairs Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for armchairs, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Among the one-offs to pass through: a sedan chair, a Chinese hongmu throne-style pair, Ceylonese ebony armchairs, and a pair made from dugout elephant feet.
Gillows, stamped or attributed·Howard & Sons·Maple & Co·Cornelius V. Smith·William Birch·Holland & Sons·George Jack, attributed·Harry and Lou Epstein·Hampton·Thonet
The Antique Armchairs Glossary
- Open armchair
- Arms with no upholstery between arm and seat, so the frame shows through. Around 672 titles use the word.
- Elbow chair or carver
- A dining or desk chair with arms, often the armed chair from a larger set. Carver appears in a couple of hundred titles.
- Windsor
- A country chair with a solid seat into which the turned legs and back sticks are socketed. Over a thousand titles carry it.
- Wing chair
- An upholstered easy chair with side panels rising from the arms. Wing runs to 843 titles, wing back to 224.
- Button back
- Upholstery drawn into a pattern of buttons, a Victorian habit that recurs throughout the archive.
- Matched pair
- Two chairs assembled to go together rather than made as a pair. Dealers keep this distinct from a true pair.
Antique Armchairs: Frequently Asked Questions
Why are so many sold as pairs?
Armchairs were often made in twos for a fireside, a hall or either end of a dining table. Just over a quarter of all titles on Sellingantiques contain the word pair.
Sets go further. Fours, sixes, eights, a harlequin set of eight Windsors, a set of twelve and a set of sixteen all appear.
What does a bare "19th Century" date mean?
It means a range, not a year. "19th Century" alone accounts for over three thousand listings, with "Victorian" adding more than a thousand and "18th Century" several hundred.
Decade-level dating clusters in the 1880s to 1930s. Where a title carries a circa year, the dealer is naming something tighter.
Which timbers turn up most?
Mahogany leads by a wide margin, appearing in around two thousand titles. Walnut and oak follow, then rosewood, yew and birch.
Elm and ash belong mainly to the Windsor and country chairs, where the seat is solid timber and the sticks are socketed into it.
Is Howard & Sons the same as Howard style?
No. The Howard name appears in 542 titles, and much of that is "Howard style" or "in the manner of" rather than the firm.
Stamped or attributed chairs sit above the general run. The firm's model names, Bridgewater, Grafton, Willoughby, Woodstock and Ingleby, recur across listings.
How old do these get?
The dated field starts at 1635. Joined oak wainscot chairs of the 17th century sit at that end, along with a William and Mary period example dated 1700.
The young end runs to 1960, with 1930s Art Deco leather and satin birch chairs closing the range.
Are Swedish armchairs common on Sellingantiques?
Sweden is the most persistent foreign origin after France, with 279 titles. Satin birch, tiger birch and bleached oak are the materials named.
They come as Art Deco pairs more often than singly.