A YORKSHIRE WINDSOR ARMCHAIR, ASH WITH AN ELM SEAT, 2ND HALF 19TH CENTURY, with double bow back

A YORKSHIRE WINDSOR ARMCHAIR, ASH WITH AN ELM SEAT, 2ND HALF 19TH CENTURY, with double bow back and circular seat, 93cm high

This elegant and dynamic chair was made by a skilled Windsor chair maker and rural woodworker who was aware of an earlier North American Windsor design, known as a `Sack back`, which was a common form made in Connecticut and other East Coast centres circa 1790 - 1800. (See Goyne-Evans The American Windsor Chair. p 337 fig 6-181 for a closely similar example.)

This chair has amalgamated a number of features of the American form with other regional elements from the Yorkshire tradition. Specifically, the use of a round in section branch-made top bow, the shaped ends to the arm bow, the `fan` profile of the tapered back spindles. the round seat, pronounced centrally bulbous leg cross stretchers, the legs which are morticed through the seat, and the back spindles which are similarly through-morticed and wedged to secure them are all characteristic of North American design. However, the chair firmly confirms its Yorkshire origin in the particular profile of the under-arm support -turnings (see Cotton B D The English Regional Chair. p 193 fig NE 340 which shows a Windsor chair with closely similar under-arm turnings made by T.Rhodes of Halifax, Yorks fl.1866-1908.) The front leg turnings are a local form too, and have been noted on a number of regional painted Windsor chairs from Yorkshire. The rear leg turnings are of a regional design too, but in this case, in a slightly modified form, from the Thames Valley tradition, particularly in Buckinghamshire. The Elm wood used in the seat is characteristically English, whereas other woods, including Sweet Chestnut are common in American examples.

The technology adopted in making this chair where expertly turned parts are combined with back spindles which are facetted and the product of a draw-horse and draw-knife technique, suggest, as it does with West Country Windsors of this type, that this chair was made by a maker familiar with using a draw knife in other rurally based crafts that he undertook: perhaps cart, ladder, sheep hurdle or dry barrel making.

This chair has considerable residues of its original blue/green paint over-all and evidence of the white grain filler used under the paint can also be seen along the front edge of the seat. Use over time has rubbed away some of the paint to reveal the wood grain, and in this, the chair has acquired the warmth and evidence of its past that antique furniture often aspires to.

Dr. B.D. Cotton