Antique Edwardian Chairs
Early twentieth-century English seating sold under the Edwardian label: single chairs, pairs and sets, made for the dining room, the library, the bedroom and the desk.
Antique Edwardian Chairs
Mahogany runs through roughly a third of the titles, oak through a sixth, with walnut, beech, elm, ash, satinwood and rosewood behind them. The form you are most likely to meet is a mahogany armchair or a set of mahogany dining chairs, and inlay is the commonest decorative note, named in around one title in seven.
The category has two poles. One is the armchair, upholstered easy, wing, club, bergère, library and porter's chairs among them, with leather a recurring covering in the titles. The other is the dining or salon chair sold in multiples: pairs in some four hundred listings, then fours, sixes, eights and longer sets running to twelve, fourteen and one of sixteen.
Between the two sits a large working population of desk and office seating, revolving and swivel chairs, smoker's bows and captain's chairs, from the moment when clerical and study work moved onto adjustable seats. Small-room chairs fill out the rest: tub, corner, bedroom, nursing, dressing-table and boudoir. Arts and Crafts and revival patterns cut across all of it.
Read the heading as a style as much as a date. The dealers' dated field uses the word Edwardian over eleven hundred times, and only 887 of 2,400 listings carry a clean year. The tail stretches from an oak chair given as 1700 to pieces put at 1930, with Victorian, 1890s and 1920s entries throughout, and c1900 used as a hedge in the titles.
Where The Range Sits
Numbers do most of the work. Singles and pairs fill the lower half of the range, while sets of eight, ten, twelve, fourteen and sixteen sit at the top of it. A set of sixteen comb-back captain's chairs holds the highest ground of the dining branch, and a long set of matched chairs will always outrank the same pattern as a single.
Timber and decoration push the same way. Satinwood, rosewood, coromandel, burr walnut and marquetry or parquetry cluster above the plain beech, elm and ash kitchen and bedroom chairs, and single beech kitchen chairs and small inlaid bedroom chairs sit at the bottom of the range.
Form separates the rest. Deep upholstered seating, wing, club and library armchairs in leather, concentrates in the upper titles, while small bedroom, dressing-table and corner chairs concentrate at the lower end. Titles that include full reupholstery in the sale, and titles naming or attributing a London or Edinburgh workshop, sit high as well, though most such attributions are phrased as style, manner or design.
Antique Edwardian Chairs Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for edwardian chairs, 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.
Edwardian chairs have been listed on Sellingantiques since 2008, and more than 1,500 have passed through since then.
MAPLE & Co
The Antique Edwardian Chairs Glossary
- Carver
- The armed chair in a dining set, which is why sets are advertised as six plus two or ten plus two.
- Elbow chair
- An open-arm single chair, named in some sixty titles and often the carver from a dining set.
- Tub chair
- A chair with a curved, enclosing back that sweeps round into the arms; one of the larger small-room groups, at 150 titles.
- Revolving or swivel
- A desk chair on a rotating action, sometimes with a rise-and-fall screw; revolving appears in 170 titles, swivel in 77.
- Bergère
- A chair with enclosed sides, often split-cane, appearing in 45 titles.
- Metamorphic library chair
- A chair that converts into a set of library steps. Three turned up in eight hundred sampled titles.
Antique Edwardian Chairs: Frequently Asked Questions
What wood are Edwardian chairs usually made from?
Mahogany leads, named in about a third of the titles on Sellingantiques, with oak next at around a sixth.
Beyond those two the timbers run wide: walnut, beech, elm, ash, satinwood, rosewood, coromandel, burr walnut, teak, chestnut, birch, fruitwood and alder all appear. Teak is reserved for garden seating.
Are these chairs sold singly or in sets?
Both. Pairs are named in over four hundred titles, and dining chairs in more than three hundred.
Sets of four, six and eight are the everyday sizes. Longer runs exist too, with tens, twelves, a fourteen and one set of sixteen comb-back captain's chairs recorded.
Why do some listings say c1900 rather than a year?
Because the period label is doing the dating. The dated field uses the word Edwardian over eleven hundred times, and only 887 of 2,400 listings carry a clean year.
c1900 shows up in 88 titles as a hedge. Alongside it sit entries given only as 19th Century, Victorian or 1920s, so the heading covers a style as much as a reign.
What kinds of desk chairs come up?
Desk appears in 382 titles and office in 203, making this one of the bigger branches of the category.
Revolving and swivel chairs dominate it, often in leather. Smoker's bows, with their continuous hooped arm-and-back rail, and captain's chairs recur alongside them.
Do maker's names appear on Edwardian chairs?
Rarely with any consistency. Only one name clears three dealers across the whole archive, which is MAPLE & Co.
Other firms turn up in titles, but usually as style, manner, design or attributed rather than as a stamp or label. Eighteenth-century pattern names are used the same way, as shorthand for a look.
Which unusual forms turn up in this category?
Metamorphic library chairs that convert into steps appear three times in eight hundred sampled titles.
The one-offs include a spinning chair, a barber's chair, a masonic chair from a set of twelve, a pair of P&O ship's revolving chairs, a convalescent invalid wheelchair and a set of Scottish trophy armchairs.