Eighteenth Century Windsor Chair - A Child’s Windsor Chair with the Gothic Arched Back in Yew Wood

Eighteenth century Windsor chair. Difficult to date exactly since this type was made for a long time, but probably late in the century and continuing into the early nineteenth century. The simple stickback without a splat, and the saddle seat are typical of the earlier types. The curving arm supports are also interesting, since during and after the Regency period turned arm supports became the fashion. This indicates that this chair may be earlier. However, this design appears in Gillows’ cost books in the early nineteenth century both in mahogany and an elm and cherrywood combination.
Elm and cherrywood.
A child’s Windsor chair with the Gothic arched back in yew wood. Although the arm supports and legs bear fairly representative nineteenth century turning work, the crinoline stretcher and well shaped splat make this a nicely proportioned and well made chair.
A Windsor chair of c.1760. The seat would be very ample and the chair of bold proportions. Note the curving crinoline stretcher between the front legs  a feature usually associated with better-made chairs.
A comb-back Windsor chair of approximately 1780. Note the well-shaped saddle seat and the leg turning which is emphasized at the lower part. Many American Windsor chairs are of this design.
Price Range: Single $30  $40
(Yew not often found in this design)
Also, sets of this type are not usually found.
A fairly typical Windsor chair of the nineteenth century. The proportion and the turning of legs and arm supports are altogether heavier. There are still reasonable numbers of these chairs in existence and their very strong construction, particularly when yew is used, makes them very durable and utilitarian antiques.
A fairly common type of low-backed Windsor used for dining purposes. Note the turned arm supports which indicate nineteenth century origins.
Another simple variation of a type which was made during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this case there is no left arm since the chair was made for an Officers’ mess where the facility to rise, wearing a
sword, without picking up the chair as well was a considerable advantage.
A mid-nineteenth century Mendlesham chair of c.1830, a Suffolk variation of Windsor designs rather allied to Lancashire chairs in the decoration. Highly priced in East Anglia.
A late nineteenth century development of the Windsor chair. Rather ornate with heavy turning; simpler versions were common in schools and offices or institutions until recently.
The Smoker’s Bow, a chair very common in offices and public houses from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. A large heavy chair which will stand considerable abuse. The horizontal hoop is no longer made by
bending the wood but is constructed from several pieces shaped on a band saw and screwed together. In early Windsor chairs this method of forming the hoop was adopted, but not always by using screws; the upright spindles did this.

Although these chairs are usually attributed to the end of the eighteenth century, their origins go back much further, and chairs of similar design are known to have been made as early as the end of the seventeenth century. Their construction is entirely different from any other type of country chair, and relates more
Signs of authenticity
1. Figuring of grain clearly visible on underside of seat as well as surface — timber was split, not sawn.
2. On chairs with arms, yew wood arm hoop until c.1790.
3. Back and front legs with matching turning.
4. No nails, joints of any description other than plain taper-turned tenons on all joins.
5. Saddle shape to seats, on versions with and without arms.
6. On chairs with arms without V-support and ‘bob tail’, grain running from side to side on seat.
7. On chairs with V-supports, and ‘bob tail’, grain running front to back.
8. Uneven thicknesses of ’sticks’ on all hand-made chairs.
9. Back feet more worn from use than front feet.
10. Worn, rich patination on seat and all parts in contact with body.
11. On hooped backs, ends of hoops split and wedged under seat for added strength.
Likely restoration and repair
12. Legs replaced, so no wear on feet.
13. Sticks replaced and these not taper-turned.
14. Seats not saddle-shaped suggests recent reproductions.
15. Saw-marks on undersides of seats indicates recent manufacture. Seat timber was split not sawn.
16. Hoops not dowelled right through seat or split and wedged indicates recent manufacture.
17. Legs replaced with wrong timber, often elm, to match seat. Should be beech, birch or fruitwood.
closely to the joint stool than to any other early chair. It is probable that they evolved from the simplest form of seat furniture of all - the three-legged stool.
In the case of Windsor chairs, it is not the backs, arms or legs which are the most important feature. It is the seat, made of a single slab of wood, usually elm, and worked with an adze into a saddle shape. This single
feature remains constant in all true Windsors, with or without arms.
The bending properties of yew wood had long been known, since it was the wood from
which longbows were made. The first use of a yew-wood bow on Windsors was not the upright hoop but a circular back and arm support, parallel to the chair seat. Originally the legs were simply pegged into the
Construction and materials thick seat-timber without stretchers. and splayed to wedge them. A row of holes was dowelled round the seat, and straight taper-turned ’sticks’ joined oined the arm-hoop to the seat, continuing up to form a curved back. held in place by a simple crest rail.
These early Windsors are often known as ’stick-backs’ or ‘comb backs’ because the shaped crest rail resembles a comb. It was not a very solid construction, and sticks and legs
became insecure and fell apart with use and as the timber shrank. But as long as the seat was intact, the pieces could easily be replaced, since they were extremely simply made. This rudimentary design seems to have been made independently by foresters and wood-turners all over the country, with regional differences in woods and detail, wherever there were good supplies of suitable timber. They are found in the West Country, and the Midlands, and notably in Buckinghamshire, in and around High Wycombe, which later became the heart of English chair-making, and has continued to be the centre of the industry until the present.
Improvements in the rudimentary design were soon apparent: a thicker central splat, often only below the arm-hoop, appears on many chairs before the full-length decorative central splat. Stretchers were inevitable to make the construction more solid. They were either very simple, joining the front and back legs on either side, or H-shaped, taper-tenoned and swelling in the centre. Extra support was given to stick-backs with a short extension to the back of the seat, with two extra stays in a V-shape behind the back.
It is hard to determine precisely when the hoop back first became a feature of Windsor chairs, but certainly it was contemporary with Hepplewhite’s round-back chairs. Up to this period, the arm hoop was still a relatively open curve, but with improved steaming and bending wood, introduced continued overleaf.
Reproductions
Victorian
Windsor chairs have been in continuous production quite authentically until the end of the nineteenth century, with small differences in methods of manufacture. As is to be expected, those made during Victorian times, such as the smoker’s bow, have rather more bulbous turning than earlier periods, but not enough to detract from their obviously traditional pattern.
Twentieth century
Everyone should be familiar with the innumerable mass-produced versions - usually singles - made by furniture-makers with well-known names. Their chief difference lies in the materials: machine-sawn woods for seats, with no figured grain on the underside and very little on the seat surface, steamed hoops, straight ’sticks’ without taper turning, machine cut and fretted centre splats and identical machine-turned legs.
Recently, smoker’s bows have been made in blonde woods, and in cheap pale woods, stained and ebonized. Some are of excellent quality but will not endure one quarter the length of time as an original Windsor. Most of them are not cheap, and with diligent hunting it is still possible to find genuine Windsors in twos and threes, and even sixes, for the same price, though they are more likely to be of the less attractive ‘kitchen chair’ type than hooped backs, which are now extremely scarce.
Genuine Windsor chairs dating from the eighteenth century are extremely expensive and sought after. Even late nineteenth century Windsor chairs with hooped backs can cost as much as their dining-room counterparts. Good Windsor chairs with arms are very much in demand.
Variations

Invariably the saddle seat was made from well-seasoned elm, a wood which did not warp with damp and was less likely to shrink or split than oak. Ash is also sometimes found in some districts. Legs were often of straight-grained beech, easy to work and turn, and less liable to wear. Arm hoops were almost always of yew wood until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The ’sticks’ were of ash, beech, birch or fruitwood - pliant woods with spring, rather than solid woods like oak and elm which are more rigid and liable to split. All four legs were turned to the same pattern and pegged or tenoned into holes in the seat, often with the dowels continuing right through the seat, as on joint stools. Stretchers were plain H-shaped on most straightforward Windsors, taper-turned and tenoned into the legs. In the mid-eighteenth century the ‘cow’s horn’ or crinoline stretcher was a feature of Windsors with arms, curving back from the two front legs and joined to the back legs with two angled, taper-turned stretchers. On these chairs, legs and arm supports were of a simplified baluster shape with ring turning. The hooped back on armed chairs is pegged right through the arm hoop - on chairs without arms, right through the seat. The back ,sticks’ are the full height of the chair, running through the arm hoop from seat to crest.

Windsor chair towards the end of the eighteenth century, woods other than yew could be used. It was steamed and bent, then clamped and cooled in the shape of a horse-shoe or hoop. By this time there had already been many refinements in the basic design: legs were bobbin-turned, front and back, as were the arm supports. Cabriole legs were used in the mid-eighteenth century, in most cases not very successfully as far as design was concerned. During the `Chippendale period’ many chair-makers attempted variations on the ‘Gothic’ with some curious results.
The two best-known designs for the central splat of the hoop back are the ‘wheelback’ and the ‘Prince of Wales’ feathers’, both contemporary with Hepplewhite. It was probably around this period that these essentially country chairs were dignified with the name
`Windsor’, by which they have been known ever since
Child’s high chair, early nineteenth century, in elm, ash and yew, with cow’s horn or crinoline stretcher. The footrest is missing.
Price bands
Elm and yew smoker’s bow,£.150–200.
Comb back in yew, ash and elm, £240-450.
Child’s high chair, £650-750.
Cabriole leg, eighteenth century, £850-1,200.
Nineteenth-century ‘kitchen’ chair, £85-160.
Highly-prized late eighteenth-century Windsor, with Cabriole legs, crinoline stretcher, well-designed pierced back splat and curving arm supports.
Elm and yew smoker’s bow, with rather bulbous Victorian turned legs and arm supports.
Early nineteenth-century comb back.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century the hoop back armchair was made in a design known as a ’smoker’s bow’. This was a squat version of an arm chair, with a flat bow cut from a single piece of wood, with a dumpy little crest rail dowelled on to the back. The ’sticks’ were far stouter, and were usually bobbin-turned, splaying out from the seat and dowelled into the underside of the flat armpiece. Hooped-back armchairs, wheelbacks and Prince of Wales’ feathers designs have rather eclipsed all other varieties of the Windsor chair such as the rail back, the lathe back and the spindle back.
The two factors which characterize a Windsor remain constant however: a solid seat into which the legs are pegged or tenoned, and a separate back structure, pegged or tenoned into the seat. No Windsor chair has back legs which continue up to form the supports of the back.
Late nineteenth-century
version of classic Windsor, with heavy arms, crest rail and thick back splats.