What wood are they usually made from?

Mahogany, named in the great majority of titles on Sellingantiques. It appears as solid timber and as veneer, with flame and figured cuts cited separately when a dealer thinks the figure worth naming. The exceptions are thin on the ground. Painted and stripped pine forms a small stream, and single listings bring in satinwood, rosewood, burr walnut, pollard oak, Karelian birch, amboyna, partridge wood and yew.

Does Regency mean the piece dates to 1811-20?

Not as the field is used. Regency here is the dealer's style label, and it sits on 552 listings against only 74 that give a clean year. The named years run from 1800 to 1930, with c1820 written into 88 titles, the most cited year in the category by a wide margin. The later dates belong to Regency-style and Georgian Regency design pieces of the 1900s to 1920s. The title is where a year usually turns up.

How common is the bow front?

A third of titles describe one, and mahogany bow together accounts for 181. It's the single shape most associated with the category. The rest of the mahogany group is straight or flat-fronted, sometimes titled as a chest of graduated drawers.

Are there makers' names attached to these?

No. A scan of the whole archive for maker candidates returned nothing at all, so this is a category read by timber, form and decoration rather than by signature. What titles do carry instead is construction detail, oak-lined drawers, brushing slides, original brasses, and the odd regional label.

Which types are the small and unusual ones?

Small appears in 75 titles, with narrow in 10, and phrases like dwarf and of small proportions recur. Miniature and apprentice chests account for 14, among them a burr yew apprentice piece and a rosewood miniature. Campaign and military chests are scarcer still at 9 titles, and they bring teak, camphorwood and brass binding into a category otherwise built from mahogany.

How many come up for sale each year?

Around 89 a year on Sellingantiques, from a pool of 181 different dealers who have listed one at some point. That's close to a chest apiece, which tells you this is a form almost every general furniture dealer keeps in stock sooner or later.

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Regency Chest of Drawers

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A Regency chest of drawers is English bedroom and dressing-room furniture: a case of long drawers on bracket or splayed feet, veneered in mahogany, made in the first three decades of the 19th century.