What is the most common type sold?

The Windsor, by a wide margin. It runs to about a quarter of titles on Sellingantiques, in ash and elm and sometimes yew, with the back type spelled out in the listing. Most often it comes as a set of kitchen or dining chairs, or as a single armchair.

Which timbers turn up in these chairs?

Elm leads, then oak, ash, yew and beech, with fruitwood, walnut and mahogany in smaller numbers. Elm and ash are frequently named together, elm for the plank seat and ash for the bent and turned parts. Yew is the scarcest of the Windsor timbers in this archive and sits at the top of the range, now and then with burr figure in the splat.

How large do sets get?

Fours and sixes are the usual sizes named in titles, with pairs very common too. Bigger runs do appear. Sets of eight, ten, twelve, thirteen and even fourteen have come through. Listings distinguish a true set from a matched or harlequin set, which is a group of similar but not identical chairs.

Are country chairs always English?

The population is overwhelmingly English and Welsh, made by local turners, wheelwrights and village chairmakers using native timbers and regional patterns. Continental and further-flung pieces do appear in small numbers: French, Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, Irish súgán, Scandinavian and American.

Why do upholstered armchairs appear under this heading?

Country house armchairs share the heading with vernacular timber chairs. Deep-seated, buttoned-back, wing, club and library armchairs all sit here, around a seventh of the category. They behave differently from the timber chairs. The ones carrying a firm's name, stamped or attributed, sit at the highest end of everything listed under this heading.

Do unusual one-off forms come up?

They do, and generally once. A metamorphic chair that opens into library steps, a child's correction chair, a chair on wheels, an Orkney chair, a Fair Isle crofter chair and a lambing chair have each surfaced. Children's chairs are a steadier minor strand: high chairs, small rockers and miniature Windsors. The occasional settle or bench arrives under the heading as well.

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Antique Country Chairs

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Chairs made outside the fashionable cabinet trade, by village turners and chairmakers in native ash, elm, oak and yew, for farmhouses, cottages and inns.