A Mahogany Sheraton Style Single Chair - Country Sheraton Design Armchair  -  Chair of the Early Regency Period

A Sheraton design chair of considerable workmanship. Many such chairs are to be found painted in white and gilt or otherwise having painted decoration on birch or beech wood. In the main the painted versions are
more highly sought after than the mahogany ones, which makes for higher prices. Note the turned and fluted legs. The arm uprights have spiral reeding.
A Sheraton design arm and single chair in mahogany. The uprights and arms are reeded, which lightens the square solidarity of design. Note the vase shaped turned arm supports and the way in which the broad top
rail is panelled. The legs and back uprights are reeded; this effect is also carried round the panel in the wider top back rail.
A simpler Sheraton design with tapering legs normally made in mahogany. The arm uprights are of straightforward turning without the spiral reeding which adds greatly to price. An elegant and simple style which remained popular for many years.
Late 18th century arm and single chairs. Note the broad top rail in the back, the panel veneered in figured mahogany. The spiral twist middle rail is a feature of quality particularly important in value assessment of these chairs. The legs are turned, without any fluting. The arms of the elbow chair sweep forward and curve down to meet the line of the front legs. The proportion of these admirable smaller dining chairs makes them
extremely popular in the modern home,
Another late Georgian c. 1810 mahogany armchair, something of a combination of Sheraton and prevailing styles. The wide top back rail is veneered with a panel of figured mahogany and the centre rail is elegantly
reeded. The turning of the front legs and the arm supports, with the popular vase shape, is lightly and gracefully done. Occasionally brass stringing will be found around the inlaid back panel, which adds to the
decorative value.
A mahogany Sheraton style single chair with Gothic arching in the design of the back. The legs are tapered on the inside edge only and are reeded, as is the back. An elegant and simple chair.
A mahogany armchair of the late 18th century. An excellent example of a good quality chair, as evidenced in the reeding and lightness of design of the back. The turned legs are a little clumsier and have hints of later
things to come.
Country Sheraton design armchair in mahogany with bowed solid seat. A satisfying and simple country design of which many were made to meet the popular demand caused by the town versions.
A simpler Sheraton design with tapering legs normally made in mahogany. The arm uprights are of straightforward turning without the spiral reeding which adds greatly to price. An elegant and simple style which remained popular for many years.
Late 18th century arm and single chairs. Note the broad top rail in the back, the panel veneered in figured mahogany. The spiral twist middle rail is a feature of quality particularly important in value assessment of these chairs. The legs are turned, without any fluting. The arms of the elbow chair sweep forward and curve down to meet the line of the front legs. The proportion of these admirable smaller dining chairs makes them
extremely popular in the modern home.
Another late Georgian c. 1810 mahogany armchair, something of a combination of Sheraton and prevailing styles. The wide top back rail is veneered with a panel of figured mahogany and the centre rail is elegantly
reeded. The turning of the front legs and the arm supports, with the popular vase shape, is lightly and gracefully done. Occasionally brass stringing will be found around the inlaid back panel, which adds to the
decorative value.
Proportion and design  Figure of wood and inlays
A country Sheraton single chair in mahogany with straight legs and solid seat. The square back with vertical rails owes much to the popularity of Sheraton styles, otherwise the design comes from a straightforward 18th century construction.
A rather heavier Sheraton style mahogany country chair with drop-in seat. The broad top rail of the back has been made slightly wider than the back uprights which detracts slightly from the elegance of the style.
Otherwise the construction and tapering legs are typical.
An elegant chair of the early Regency period, with caned back and seat. The outward turn of the simulated bamboo legs is most effective and the balance is completed by the curved top rail. The seat rail and the top
rail are inlaid with stringing in the approved classical manner. Many of these chairs were made of birch or beech and then ebonised or painted. They are almost inevitably very expensive.
Lightness and elegance of design

Art Deco CHAIRS 1920-1940
Painted chair designed by Rietveld for a military club in 1932.
Modernist and Art Deco: About 1917, Dutch architect Rietveld, trained by father as a joiner, designs his first chair under- influence of Lloyd Wright, dispensing with traditional joints – type that becomes known as ‘Red and Blue’ (see CONSTRUCTION.) With other members of group associated with de Stijl magazine, believes ‘the machine contributes to the spiritualization of life’.
In 1919, Gropius established Bauhaus school of art and design at Weimar, moving to Dessau, 1925. Breuer- steel-framed ‘Wassily’ chair, 1925; Stam makes tubular metal and leather chair by Breuer 1924.
cantilevered chair, 1924-6, with versions by van der Rohe and Breuer also contending for first place. Van der Rohe designs Barcelona chair as exhibition piece, 1929 – still in production. Equally famous is Breuer’s steel and wood chaise longue, 1932.
In France, Le Corbusier works along similar lines, but pushed to perimeter of 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes – more decorative than modern industrial – devoted mainly to what is now known as Art Deco: Ruhlmann’s elegant armchairs and sofas with inlaid frames, Defrene’s three-piece suites upholstered in tapestry, the frames carved and gilt. Le Corbusier and Perriand design grand confort easy chair (1926) with tubular steel frame, leather upholstery, consistent with ‘beautiful equipment’ concept.Art Late 1920s and 1930s seat furniture combines best and worst of functional modernist and extravagant Art Deco styles, best elegantly streamlined, worst flashy and vulgar. Most distinguished work from Scandinavia, where trim chairs with seat and back forming continuous curves are designed about 1925 by Asplund, followed by Klint’s hand-made look, and Aalto’s use of steamed and bent plywood for cantilevered frames.
Modernist: Oak, ash, beech, walnut; birch plywood; tubular steel, leather, woven textiles.
Deco Chair, influenced by primitive African furniture, 1920s
Art Deco: Mahogany, walnut, rosewood, steel, fine leathers, suede, tapestry, printed textiles, wool moquette, uncut moquette.
Modernists reject traditional methods. Rietveld – a competent joiner – abandons mortiseand-tenon joints, making ‘Red and Blue’ armchair by screwing together, face to face, six uprights, four stretchers, two seat rails, a back rail, two narrow boards as arms and two wide ones as seat and back. Breuer, Stam, van der Rohe, Le Corbusier devise continuous shapes in tubular steel, thus obviating joinery. In 1930s, Breuer uses aluminium strips.
Art Deco essentially traditional, however novel in appearance; frames joined with mortise-and-tenon or dowel joints.
Modernists reject extraneous decoration, but are not brutalises as has been said; they see chairs, settees, chaises longues as forms of abstract sculpture, beautiful in themselves. Some designers, e.g. Rietveld, make use of contrasting colours; others, e.g. Kline, rely on the natural grain of the wood and on undyed leather.
Art Deco, while not neglecting line and form, puts great emphasis on decoration –marquetry in exotic woods, metal inlay, carving, lacquering. When cheap furniture trade attempts to reproduce effect of faintly decadent glamour, the result has all the charm of smeared lipstick.
Modernist: Natural woods, waxed or French polished and rubbed down to semi-matt. Early tubular steel nickel-plated, later types chromium-plated. Upholstery often made as separate units – squab cushions, pads.
Art Deco: Woods either natural colours or stained. Cheaper versions highly polished or cellulose sprayed. Better types very skilfully upholstered, cheaper ones badly finished. More traditional types, neither distinctly modern’ nor ‘Art Deco’, often supplied with loose covers (for further details, see the Box at the foot of this page).
Being the ‘antiques’ period nearest to the present, and the one in which mass-production came into its own, the 1920-40 period might be expected to offer a wide and inexpensive choice. In practice, the best modernist and Art Deco seat furniture is at least as expensive as that of other periods, and second-best that is worth having is hard to find; but auction sales in houses furnished in 1930s can provide excellent opportunities.
The practice of fitting loose covers dates back to 18thC, when – especially in France – sets were changed with the seasons. Nothing that early now likely to be concealed, but interesting chairs and settees dating from 19thC onwards can be found with original upholstery hidden and protected by tatty chintz covers.
Rosewood stool by Eileen Gray, 1920-5
Aluminium chair with plywood seat by Breuer, 1932.

CHAIRS: VICTORIAN UPHOLSTERED
About  1840-1900
Typical mid-Victorian lady’s drawing-room chair.
Left, a late-Victorian gentleman’s chair with scrolled arms, rounded back, straight
A’squared-up’ version 0/ the 1880’s with  machineproduced carving.
Turned legs and arm supports (the latter sometimes as a row of spindles).
CHAIRS: CORNER
Mahogany, walnut, occasionally rosewood. Stained beech and birch on later cheaper versions and for underframes. Sometimes frame of cast iron.
About 1710-1770 and about 1890-1915
Early-18thC corner chair.
Standard methods employed (see VICTORIAN BALLOON-BACKS, p. 66, and OTHER 19THC AND EARLY 20THC TYPES, p. 67). Legs structurally weak, so look for signs of new staining around repaired joints. Almost
inevitably re-upholstered, not always correctly. Should have plain seat, padded armrests and deep buttoning on the back and inside of arms only. Note that the back. buttoning starts above the waistline.
Carving: Occasionally floral or classical inlay on crest rails of squared-up versions.
French polish.
VALUES
Only the best quality, most curvaceous examples fetch more than three figures. Very many examples of all types are within the average buyer’s reach. Always take the cost of re-upholstering and fabric and trimmings
into account when negotiating.
Watch out for the new wood that characterizes increasing numbers of reproductions. These may look impressive at a glance but they lack patination and will probably have insubstantial foam upholstery.
PRIE DIEU
A very popular occasional drawing-room chair, ostensibly designed for prayer. Tall, narrow, straight back with flat top and T-shaped upholstery. Sometimes bordered by (fashionably twist) turned columns. Generally
cabriole legs on castors but later versions with straight, turned legs. Often covered with Berlin woolwork, a form of needlework popular with Victorian ladies.
Peculiar to the 18thC, and to the late Victorian; Edwardian period, corner chairs are thought by some to have been designed as gentlemen’s writing chairs. Nearly always single, only rarely seen in pairs. Despite their
awkward and uncomfortable appearance, surprisingly numerous today. Country versions abound. Often made as commode chairs.
Incorporating many features of standard chairs of their day  vase-shaped splats, cabriole legs, turned stretchers and so on; during Queen Anne period, straight legs and stretchers and pierced splats for Chippendale period, but they exhibit specific features of their own too.
Most have stretchers; there can be four of equal height, one on each side, or they can be arranged on a cross.
The back, which extends around two sides, has two splats between three identical and always turned uprights, supporting a curved, flat, horizontal rail which broadens out slightly as it extends beyond the side uprights to form arm supports. The centre of the rail rises up a few inches to form a back support. A few of these chairs have a much taller, shaped back support, in which case they are called ‘barber’s chairs’. Virtually all have drop-in seats.
On early versions, the front leg only may be cabriole, the other three being turned to match the uprights above.
As with all country-made chairs of the 18thC, design motifs may be mixed  Queen Anne splats for example, might be used with later straight legs.
Edwardian ‘revival’ versions were sometimes made of dark mahogany in Chippendale style (see p. 56) with straight legs, but more often in light mahogany with spindly, turned legs, stretchers and delicate pierced
splats. Some had raised, ornamental cresting. The seat could be drop-in; or fixed, with flattish upholstery set in one or two inches from the edge. Some country versions were made in oak with rushseats.
Walnut, mahogany and oak.
Standard practices employed. Uprights dowelled into ‘arms’ of the top rail.
Restrained carving on the best examples.
VALUES
Walnut Queen Anne cabriole leg versions are the most sought after.

CHAIRS — country
Windsors did not have a monopoly on pleasing country chairs and designs and serious students of country chairs keep unearthing particular local examples, some of them very attractive. In addition, the nineteenth
century saw the mass-production of many satisfying designs for the enormous demand from the manufacturing towns — for house, office and institution as well as tavern. As the price of poorly made modern chairs continues to rise, so more and more people see the sense in buying chairs of age and character. Prices have therefore shot up over the last few years. This is an area of British furniture where much research is still to be done.
A type known to have been made round Oxford in the mid-nineteenth century. This example in yew wood with the usual elm seat, solidly made (the circle portion is an inch thick), is of very similar design to one drawn by Sheraton, only with the circle enlarged. Yew, of course, increases the price. c. 1850
A typical ‘kitchen’ armchair of the mid- to late-nineteenth century on turned legs, used in institutions and offices as well as homes. Usually made in birch or beech, with an elm seat and stained dark. When stripped,
often a pleasant golden brown colour. Judging by the extreme difficulty of matching up sets — the turning on the back is nearly always different — they were made over a wide area.
Mid- to late 19th century
A Mendlesham chair from the village of that name in Suffolk where the Days, father and son, worked. A superbly designed and executed example in fruitwood. The influence of Sheraton designs is strong.
Early 19th century
A typical ‘kitchen’ or institutional chair with pleasantly Gothic arched and spindled decoration in the back. Shown in several manufacturers’ catalogues and a very similar design shown by W. Smee in 1850. Made of
beech with an elm seat.
c. 1850s    A pleasant nineteenth century kitchen chair of the ‘Roman spindles’ type with robust uprights and bold turning. The half-round cuts in the underside of the top rail help to lighten the appearance. Badly
undervalued. Similar to a Worksop design.
Mid-19th century
A variant, but lacking the balance of the previous example. The debased Windsor splat seems upside-down and sagging. Not a wild success. 1880s
Another country variant which frequently turns up in East Anglia. Sheraton design is apparent.
Early 19th century
A deceptively simple little chair. It has a well dished seat and a charming horizontal splat which looks as though it should be turned and dropped slightly in this example. A good colour would make a set very desirable. 1840-1860
The ‘blade’ back has overtones of 249 but this chair is really a slightly more ornate version of 253
Early 19th century
An even more simple design. Nevertheless, there is a reeding line along the back and uprights and the seat is nicely curved.