What is the difference between button back and deep buttoned?

Button back describes a back drawn down by covered buttons with shallow stuffing behind them, so the surface is only lightly dimpled. Deep buttoned means the ties pull well into thick stuffing, and the folds between the buttons stand out as pronounced diamonds. The term appears in 66 titles, concentrated on the bigger wing, club and library chairs.

Which period do most of these chairs come from?

The dated field runs from 1800 to 1950, but the two biggest entries are the loose labels 19th Century and Victorian, which together cover well over half of it. Decade-level dates cluster in the 1880s, 1850s and 1860s, with a modest 20th-century tail in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. Regency appears 28 times, mostly on library chairs.

Are button back chairs sold in pairs?

Singles dominate the listings, with armchair in almost half of all titles. Pairs are the main alternative, at 189 titles. Pairs of Napoleon III salon chairs and Howard-type open armchairs sit markedly higher in the range than the equivalent single chair.

What does Napoleon III mean on a chair?

It is the French Second Empire period label, used on buttoned salon chairs. The term appears in 62 titles, alongside french in 57. These come as singles and pairs, and the back shapes are recorded as fishtail, shield, curve, spoon and square. The fishtail form turns up nowhere else in the category.

Is leather the usual cover?

No. Leather is named in fewer than a quarter of titles, so textile and unnamed covers make up the rest, with upholstered and velvet used in the remainder. Leather is more common at the larger end, on wing, club and library chairs, and those titles sit higher in the sampled order than plain textile examples.

Which maker names come up most?

Howard & Sons is the name recorded most often, in 61 titles, and it carries a vocabulary of its own: Howard style, in the manner of, and Woodstock. Many of those are style descriptions rather than firm attributions. Gillows appears as an attribution, and Cornelius V Smith turns up from a handful of dealers. Beyond those, the great bulk of the category is unattributed.