What wood are Windsor chairs made from?

Elm for the seat is the常 note, appearing in 759 titles, with ash in 474 and beech in 111 for the turned and bent parts. The phrase "ash elm" is used as one compound in 113 titles. Yew is the other big one, in 556 titles. Fruitwood turns up as well, and burr or pippy yew is the scarcest timber note in the archive.

How many chairs come in a set?

Sets of four and six are the most repeated shape in these listings, with eight also common. Sets of ten and twelve exist but appear only at the very top of the range. Singles and pairs are widely listed too - "pair" is in 223 titles. Roughly a quarter of the archive is armchairs, usually sold on their own.

Why is Rockley mentioned so often?

One small East Midlands village dominates the maker vocabulary. Rockley appears in 97 titles and nearby Worksop in 59, with Retford, Gamston, Grantham and Sleaford named alongside them. These are the yew-wood chairs, and the named-workshop examples run high. The name may be stamped on the chair or given as an attribution.

Are Windsor chairs Georgian or Victorian?

Both, and later. "19th Century" alone accounts for 1,587 listings, with Victorian on 420 and Georgian on 139. Eighteenth-century attributions number 96 and sit almost entirely in the upper reaches. At the other end, Edwardian tags and scattered 1920s dates show the form still being listed well past 1900.

What does harlequin mean in a chair listing?

It means the chairs were assembled to look alike rather than made together as one set. "Matched" and "assembled" are used the same way. Dealers also flag the opposite, describing a group as a true set. The distinction is made deliberately, because a true set of six or eight carries more than an assembled one.

Which back patterns are unusual?

Stick back, lathback, hoop back, comb back and wheel back are the everyday patterns, each named in dozens of titles. Then there are the ones that turn up once or twice across the whole archive: lobster pot, panel back, ball back, lyre back, bullseye, Prince of Wales and a heraldic lion back.

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Antique Windsor Chairs

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A Windsor is an English country chair with a solid plank seat into which the legs, sticks and back members are socketed, made for kitchens, taverns and gardens.