Windsor chair

“ What we have said in regard to the popularity of the gate-leg table applies in greater degree to the Windsor chair. The industry of turning the legs and rails of this type of chair is still carried on in Buckinghamshire. Until recent years much of this turning was done by hand by villagers in the 263 district surrounding High Wycombe, where the parts are sent to be finished and made up. To this day some of the old chair-makers use the antiquated pole lathe. But the chairs have departed from their old stateliness. It is true that they have survived, almost in spite of themselves. ”

“ The room—a large and high one—was furnished barely and like an office—with a red flock wall-paper, a brown linoleum on the floor, and in the centre of the linoleum a bulky roll-top desk and a Windsor chair. Other Windsor chairs stood in array against the walls, and a couple of rosewood bookcases with glass fronts. There was also by the fireplace an armchair covered with American leather, a rag-work hearthrug, and a large waste-paper basket stuffed with envelopes and circulars. ”

“ Probably no piece of furniture holds greater interest for the specialized or even the general collector than the chair. Its ancestry is venerable, but its remote antiquity need not be dwelt upon at length here. It is true that in a magnificent Louis Quatorze drawing-room, perfectly appointed and historically correct, the introduction of a cottage chair of the Windsor type would be as displeasing an anachronism as putting a wild thrush to neighbor with all the parrots of an avairy. ”

“ So that it is quite within reasonable surmise to attribute certain forms to the Sheraton school, or rather to the oncoming of the early nineteenth-century mannerisms. On p. 261 two examples are illustrated showing this influence. The one with the horseshoe back is devoid of the splat, which had now disappeared. The turned legs begin to show signs of modernity. The other has the top-rail familiar in later forms of cottage chair. The turned rails for the arms and the type of turning in the legs show signs of decadence. The fine days of the old Windsor chair were coming to an end. ”

“ CHAPTER XXIII
HE was making himself entirely at home. He had crossed his feet and had placed them square in the middle of the mahogany seat of my nice little Windsor chair, which he had drawn up in front of him. ”

“ During the daytime this one room loses all traces of being used for sleeping purposes at night. Billy Windsor's room was very much like a public-school study. Along one wall ran a settee. At night this became a bed; but in the daytime it was a settee and nothing but a settee. There was no space for a great deal of furniture. There was one rocking-chair, two ordinary chairs, a table, a book-stand, a typewriter—nobody uses pens in New York—and on the walls a mixed collection of photographs, drawings, knives, and skins, relics of their owner's prairie days. ”

“ A mission chair suitable for the dining room can be made from any one of the furniture woods to match the other articles of furniture. The materials can be secured from the planing mill dressed and sandpapered ready to cut the tenons and mortises. The material list can be made up from the dimensions given in the detail drawing. The front legs or [7] posts, as well as the back ones, are made from 1-3/4-in. square stock, the back ones having a slope of 2 in. from the seat to the top. All the slats are made from 7/8-in. ”

“ While the glue is setting on these parts make and assemble the back. The front and back rails may next be made and placed and the cleats and bottom slats fastened. With the adjustment of the back the chair is ready for the finish.
The posts are to be tenoned on the upper ends. These tenons are to project 3/16 in. above the arm and should be slightly beveled. The lower ends of the posts, likewise, all other projecting ends, should be beveled to avoid their splintering. All sharp corners, as on the arms, should be sandpapered just enough to take their sharpness off, so as not to injure the hand. ”

“ The Sheraton period produced many chairs with square backs in the neoclassic style, which were very fragile. Along with the chairs influenced by the master designers, we find the turned chairs made in quantities for use wherever finer chairs could not be had. Many Windsor chairs, heretofore thought to have been solely a product of the New England and Middle Atlantic States, have been found in the South, of Southern manufacture. ”

“ Each coat of the shellac should be rubbed when thoroughly dried with curled hair or fine steel wool or fine oiled sandpaper. Rub the first coats of varnish with hair-cloth or curled hair and the last coats with pulverized pumice stone and crude oil or raw linseed oil.
Cushions for the chair can be made at home. They may be made of art leather such as Spanish roan skin and the top and bottom parts fastened together by lacing leather thongs through holes previously punched along the edges of the parts. A very pretty effect is obtained by using thongs of a different but harmonious color. ”

“ If the lag screws are used, the tenons may be what are known as stubb tenons—tenons of short length. Good hot glue should be used in either case. [Pg 67]
The shape of the arms is indicated in the drawing. They are fastened to the rear posts by means of dowels and glue.
Arm Chair Complete
The slats, or verticals, of the back should not have their ends tenoned but should have the mortises in the rails cut sufficiently large to "let in" the whole end of each. This is much easier and more likely to result in a satisfactory fit than to shoulder them. ”

“ They earlier used carpets, wall-papers, foreign milliners, dress-makers, Windsor chairs, glass utensils, jewelry, dentistry, watches, umbrellas, stage-playbills, etc.
Windsor chairs were advertised in 1768 as made and sold by William Gautier in New York. He also had [Pg 113] high-backed, low-backed, sack-backed chairs and settees, and dining and low chairs. A pair of Windsor chairs are shown in Figure 51.
Illustration: Figure 52. WALL-PAPER.
Carriages were imported in 1766 from Dublin, as also men to keep them in repair. ”

“ The same is true of the legs or posts, and the slats if there are to be any.
To avoid confusion it is well to number each tenon by means of the chisel with a Roman numeral and its corresponding mortise with the same. This will prevent the fitting of one tenon into more than one mortise.
Put the parts together with warm glue if it can be had, otherwise use the prepared cold glue. In cold weather the wood ought to be warmed before the glue is applied. Put the ends of the chair together first. When the glue has set on these put the other rails in place. ”

“ Sometimes they were cleverly arranged to fold up, as in our own days: the engraving (p. 122) is from a beautiful manuscript of the fifteenth century. The chair known as that of Glastonbury is a square board on two pairs of cross-trestles, with a square board for a back, held to the seat by sloping arm pieces, shaped out to receive the arms of a sitter. On the edges of the seat and back tenons protrude, long enough to pass through mortices in the leg and arm pieces, which are pegged to keep them firm. Like the sixteenth century curule chairs these can easily be taken to pieces for travelling. ”

“ The sofas were large and roomy, the settees delightful, the arm-chairs and wing chairs regular havens of rest, and when one adds the comfort which modern upholstery gives, there is little left to desire. Even the regulation side-chair of the period, which some think was the only chair in very common use, is absolutely comfortable for its purpose. Lounging was much less in vogue then than nowadays and the old cabinet-makers realized that one must be comfortable when sitting up as well as when taking one's ease. ”

“ The lion’s head now shone like a veritable lump of gold. Finally Governor Belcher gave the chair a cushion of blue damask, with a rich golden fringe.
“Our good old chair being thus glorified,” proceeded Grandfather, “it glittered with a great deal more splendor than it had exhibited just a century before, when the Lady Arbella brought it over from England. Most people mistook it for a chair of the latest London fashion. And this may serve for an example, that there is almost always an old and timeworn substance under all the glittering show of new invention.” ”

“ Now the latter is without doubt the strongest seat for its weight which has been invented in modern times. It is one of the few successes in chair-making which can claim to be the direct outcome of scientific methods. It has absolutely no ancestors whatever, and can attach itself to no tradition. It is a bald product of the application of science to furniture, and when the Austrian inventor finally made it perfect he had achieved utility, nothing more, nothing less. The bent-wood chair is in pretty nearly every concert hall in the world. ”

“ The flower-table can be bought at Wallace’s, as can the smaller tables and chairs. A sofa and corner cabinet, can be had of Smee, while a ‘grandfather’ chair is to be had at Hewetson’s, and Bartholomew & Fletcher’s ‘Seabright’ armchair must never be forgotten. These are by far the most comfortable chairs in the whole furniture world. If we cannot rise to the oak panelling, a charming parlour may be made from plain ‘goehring,’ painted some soft colour,{143} either sea-green, electric turquoise or real ivory, and above the panelling should be a paper in the same shade as the paint ”

“ The corners of the back were always rounded. The cabriole legs were often carved with a shell on the knees, the acanthus being used in the more elaborate pieces of furniture, and ended chiefly in a club foot. Stretchers became less common, but if they were used were pushed back and did not form such an important part of the chair design. Seats were broader at the front than at the back, and all furniture showed a real desire for comfort and convenience. Marquetry and lacquer were both in great favor, and there are wonderful examples of both reproduced, but especially lacquer. ”

“ A heavy man is often put to great inconvenience because the chairs at his disposal are too flimsy to bear his weight. There are countless stories told of the Rev. Phillips Brooks, and men of his build, who dare not laugh at a dinner party lest their chairs resolve themselves into kindling wood at the first mirthful shake. In my own parlor there is one chair deep, broad, and of marvelous strength, bought with an eye to the needs of a friendly neighbor of grand dimensions. ”

“ Chairs are still heavy and carved more or less richly. Two typical specimens appear in Plate XII. As shown 113in these examples, the seats and backs were often covered with stamped leather, velvet, silk, or some woollen material and ornamented with tassels. The covers are tacked to the frame by means of large-headed nails that also form part of the decoration. A chair and footstool by Vredemann de Vries, of very characteristic model, are shown in Fig. 23. The chair is three-cornered, with a triangular seat, and the legs are connected with straining-rails. ”

“ The splat, with its varying forms, denotes the date of the chair. From 1740 to 1770 the form with cabriole legs and with finely ornamented fiddle splat was at its best. We illustrate a sufficient number of specimens to show how graceful and perfectly well balanced these chairs had become. In contemplating pieces remarkable for the highest style, it must be admitted that their artistry and their simple unaffected sense of comfort do make a direct appeal to those who are willing to recognise fine qualities in minor furniture. ”

“ The Duke, without looking at the words that the Marchesa had written, laid the check face downward on a blotter, and ran the tips of his fingers over the back to dry the ink. Then he crossed to the mantel, and pulled down the brass handle of the bell. When the footman entered, he handed the check to him, with a direction to bring the money at once. Then he came back, as to his chair, but pausing a moment at the back of it, followed the footman out of the room.
A doubt of the man's striking courtesy flitted a moment into the woman's mind. ”

“ The leather is fastened to the frame with large brass nails, and that part of the oak frame which is exposed is turned work. On many of these chairs there are three little metal ornaments on the curved top. In this example two are lost. Besides the carving on the front brace, a pattern which was often adopted and copied by English and Dutch cabinet-makers, this chair shows well that form of foot which came to be known as the "Spanish foot." ”

“ Of all the pieces of furniture in the house, chairs are the ones most used, and, as they are subjected to hard usage, [269] they should be well constructed and the joints carefully made.
In the plain chair shown in Fig. 1 the front legs are sixteen inches high, the back supports are thirty-four inches high, and all of them are one and three-quarter inches square. All the side-rails and the four that support the seat are two inches wide and three-quarters of an inch in thickness, so that the laps cut in the corner-posts (Fig. 2, A and B) will correspond in width and depth. ”

“ Turning now to the chairs, we find the heavy wooden chairs, such as are shown on Plate VII., Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, and No. 2 on Plate VIII., are giving place to newer forms. One of the most typical is the “low leather” chair, which we have already spoken of in the preceding chapter. This was generally covered with leather put on with large brass nails, and was sometimes also decorated with fringe. Genoa velvet, silk, serge, needlework, etc., were also used for covering this form of chair. A square straining-rail usually connects the legs close to the floor. ”