LATE 19TH CENTURY

Armchairs of this general design are usually associated with those made in the High Wycombe tradition in Buckinghamshire. However chair makers in the West Country often emulated successful designs from the South East, but incorporated features which were part of their own local design codes. These include the preference for hand-shaping the long back spindles with a drawer knife, a feature resulting in the facets which can be clearly felt in these chairs. Many features are carefully reproduced from their High Wycombe counterparts, including the sweep of the arms and the terminal volute carving and indeed the shape of the curved supports to the arms; but the absence of two scribed 'offering' marks on the seat edge, each side of the dove tail joint which fixes the arm to the seat, indicates a method of judging the shape of the dove tail which does not parallel those in the South East where this feature is invariably found on chairs using this form of arm support: a photograph of this joint showing the 'offering' marks is in, Dr B Cotton, The English Regional Chair, Woodbridge, 1990, p.244, fig.EA105. The unusual detail in the legs and their acute splaying outwards has parallels in other West Country Windsors, particularly those from Cornwall; the use of the crinoline stretcher is unusual in West Country Windsors, as indeed is the use of yew wood, reflecting a double awareness that these stretchers and the use of yew were reserved for the 'best' chairs in the South East tradition.

Dr B D Cotton, January 2004