What is an elbow chair?

An open-arm chair. The word turns up in 88 titles, often meaning the same thing as carver or desk chair. These come as singles and pairs, and together with desk and carver chairs they account for around a quarter of the category.

How many chairs are in a typical set?

Six is the standard unit. "Six" appears in 182 titles, against 93 for "four" and 79 for "eight". Sets in the archive run from three up to fourteen. The largest, including a fourteen-chair Anglo-Indian ebony suite and a fourteen-chair Scottish oak set, sit at the extreme top of the range.

Does Regency in a listing mean the chair is early?

Not on its own. It is used across the archive as a style label: 1,253 listings say simply Regency and 501 say 19th Century. Only 254 listings out of 2,159 carry a clean year, and those run from 1800 to 1940. The later dates belong largely to Regency style and Regency Revival chairs.

Which timbers show up most often?

Mahogany dominates, named in about half of all titles. Rosewood is second, in 219. Upper-range titles name Cuban mahogany, figured mahogany, carved rosewood, walnut, satinwood and ebony. Beech, elm and pine appear at the lower end, sometimes under paint or graining.

Are painted and faux-grained Regency chairs common?

They are a real but small part of the group, under one in ten. Painted appears in 94 titles, simulated in 61, bamboo in 55, faux in 51 and ebonised in 41. What these describe is beech or elm grained or painted to look like rosewood, satinwood or bamboo.

Who made Regency chairs?

Gillows is the one workshop with real currency in this category, named or attributed by 22 dealers across 26 mentions. The name comes up stamped, or as "attributed to", and those titles sit well above the middle of the range. Every other name in the archive belongs to a single dealer.