Antique Walnut Chairs
Seating framed or veneered in walnut, from low nursing chairs and carved side chairs to wing armchairs and long dining runs, with the walnut usually left showing around upholstery, cane or leather.
What Are They?
The walnut is normally the frame or the show wood: solid, figured or burr, polished and left visible around a seat and back that are upholstered, caned, or covered in leather, tapestry or needlework. Titles say "chairs" in the plural about as often as they name a single chair, and "pair" runs through more than a quarter of them, so multiples are the norm rather than the exception.
The chair you are most likely to meet is Victorian and upholstered, on its own or as one of a pair. Victorian appears in some 910 titles, and the Victorian and 19th-century dated fields together cover over a thousand listings. Inside that group the balloon back and the nursing, salon or parlour chair are the named types that keep coming back, with carved frames flagged in 440 titles.
Beyond the drawing room, armchairs make up about a third of the field: wing, open arm, bergere, library and desk chairs. Dining chairs, sets and matched runs account for roughly a sixth, sets of four and six being the common counts. French pieces are the largest Continental group, with Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Flemish, Portuguese, Venetian, Tyrolean and Biedermeier chairs turning up throughout, and Damascus and Syrian X-frame armchairs with shell inlay at the far edge.
Dating is often loose. The dated field runs 1700 to 1940, and 1,360 listings carry a clean year, but "19th Century" and "Victorian" between them cover more listings than every decade bucket combined. Decade dating clusters in 1850 to 1900, with a separate 1920s group of over two hundred taking in Queen Anne style, Georgian revival and Art Deco walnut.
Top And Bottom
Count does most of the work. Single nursing and bedroom chairs sit at the bottom of the range, pairs consistently above comparable singles, and the long dining runs of ten, twelve, fourteen and sixteen sit at the very top, one sixteen-chair burr walnut set above everything else. Matched pairs and harlequin sets are flagged separately when the chairs agree closely rather than exactly.
After that it is the timber and what has been done to it. Carved appears in 440 titles and carved Victorian in over a hundred, and burr or figured walnut recurs among the higher-priced sets. Named upholstery treatments pull in the same direction: leather, button back, tapestry and needlework all sit above the plain walnut armchair listing.
Early date is the third lever, and the scarcest. Eighteenth-century pieces are only 166 of the dated listings, and the highest of them are George I and George II English and 18th-century Italian. The bulk of the category is later 19th century, which is why a carved Georgian set reads differently from a Victorian one of the same size.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for walnut 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.
Walnut chairs have been listed on Sellingantiques since 2008, with over 2,300 passing through since then.
Epstein
The Antique Walnut Chairs Glossary
- Show wood
- The polished walnut left visible around the upholstery. Titles also give it as show frame, and it is the part that carries any carving.
- Balloon back
- The rounded, waisted back of a mid-Victorian side or dining chair, named in 108 titles.
- Nursing chair
- A low-seated upholstered side chair without arms. Ninety titles use the term, and salon and parlour chair cover much the same ground.
- Spoon back
- A back curved in profile to cradle the sitter, common on Victorian nursing and parlour chairs.
- Burr walnut
- Veneer cut from a burr on the tree, giving swirled figure. Sixty-nine titles name it, including the largest dining set to pass through.
- Harlequin set
- A set put together from chairs that match closely but not exactly, as against a straight run made together.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most common type?
A Victorian upholstered walnut chair, single or in a pair. Victorian appears in around 910 titles, and pair in 827.
Within that group the balloon back and the nursing, salon or parlour chair are the types dealers name most often, with carved frames noted in 440 titles.
How many walnut chairs come up in a year?
About 296 are listed on Sellingantiques in a year, and 299 different dealers have handled them.
That is close to one dealer for every listing a year, so no single shop sets the tone of the field.
Are dining sets common in this category?
Dining appears in 498 titles, roughly a sixth of the category, with dining chairs in 474 of them.
Sets of six lead the counts at 125 titles, then four at 85 and eight at 56. Runs of ten, twelve, fourteen and sixteen are the largest lots to pass through, and they sit at the top of the range.
Which armchair forms turn up?
Wing, open arm, bergere, library and desk chairs. Armchair and armchairs together account for around 1,095 titles, about a third of the field.
Wing is the most named form at 190 titles, 103 of them as wing armchair. Bergere accounts for 50, and open appears in 154.
French salon pieces are often called fauteuil rather than open armchair.
Why do so many listings just say 19th Century?
Because loose labels outnumber precise ones. "19th Century" covers 585 listings and "Victorian" 490, more between them than every decade bucket combined.
Where a decade is given it usually falls between 1850 and 1900, with a separate 1920s group of 218. The dated field as a whole runs 1700 to 1940.
Do unusual forms appear?
Now and then, with no companion in the archive: a metamorphic child's high chair, chair-steps, a folding campaign chair with bone buttons, a caquetoire, a sgabello, a savonarola, a prie-dieu.
Damascus and Syrian X-frame armchairs with mother-of-pearl or nacre-shell inlay sit at the same edge of the category. "Red walnut" also turns up as a description on a small handful of Georgian pieces.