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

Chippendale Mahogany Armchair - Mid-18th Century Chair in Mahogany - George II Period Chair - A Victorian Button-Back Mahogany ‘Ladies’ Chair with Cabriole Legs

UPHOLSTERED CHAIRS
Value points: Early examples with original upholstery even if in worn condition command a premium over the range quoted, often by an appreciable amount if the work is of fine quality. The position is reversed in the case of Victorian Chairs where the upholstery is usually of ordinary quality. Clearly most purchasers would pay a premium for good new quality material.
Early 18th century wing armchair with cabriole legs in walnut. Upholstered in leather. This is a fine example and well illustrates the three dimensional quality of the design. The wings sweep into the arms of this fine quality chair, which is as comfortable to sit in as one might imagine. Note the shape of the back legs; this feature is not normally well imitated by later craftsmen.
A George III wing armchair upholstered in leather. Note the square stretcher and leg construction of ‘Chippendale’ design. The curve of the wings is pleasant but the arms are a little stiff.
N. B. As these chairs command high prices there is a grave temptation to make a set of legs in the Georgian style and cover the modern frame with leather. Such examples usually lack the fluency of curve which was
found in better class examples.
A Chinese Chippendale mahogany armchair with upholstered back and arms. The bamboo motif is evident. The front legs are a remarkable achievement of craftsmanship and the nicely-scrolled brackets add considerable balance. The upholstery covering is of typical period design.
Mid-18th century chair in mahogany showing Chippendale con-struction in legs and stretchers.
Value points: Carving or moulding on legs  Originality of casters
A later George III period mahogany wing armchair. The sweep of the curve formed by the wings and the back rail is important. Compare the straight high line of the wings and arms in this example with the fluency of the two previous examples. This example is also rather thin, lacking the generous proportions of the better quality chairs. The lines would be improved by upholstery but the basic quality is lacking. The legs are tapered ending in casters.
Design of legs
George II period mahogany chair with stuffed back and saddle shaped seat. Covered in Soho tapestry woven with birds and small landscapes in broad naturalistic flower borders; on scrolled cabriole legs.
Mid-18th century open giltwood armchair with considerable Adam influence in the frieze and fluted legs.
A later 18th century open armchair of French influence but actually of a type made also by Chippendale. The decoration includes cartouche backs headed by shell cabochons. The frame is carved with leaf mouldings, the scrolled arms with leaf shoulders. Covered in later gros-point needlework with panels of flowers in key-pattern frame against a blue ground with roses.
Bergere caned chair of Regency period, in rosewood. These well made chairs have increased in popularity over recent years.
A George III period open armchair with arched stuffed back and padded arms on curved supports with anthemion carving, the moulded frame with bead carving, the stuffed seat on turned tapering reeded legs with lotus leaf feet.
Regency period chair decorated with brass or painted gilt mounts, frequently ebonised.
Value points: Brass decorations
Well curved leg with stretcher
A mid-Victorian open armchair in walnut, of the popular button-back type. The fluency of the curve between the arm supports and the cabriole leg is spoilt by the thickness of wood at the point where the scrolls are carved. Most examples are better balanced. This example is in walnut, but many were made in mahogany.
Value points: Decoration  Rosewood
A Victorian button-back mahogany ‘ladies’ chair, with cabriole legs. The top rail is decorated with leaf carving. The ‘grandmother’ equivalent of the previously illustrated ‘grandfather’ (i.e. with arms).
Later Victorian upholstered chair on mahogany cabriole legs. One of a large number of similar designs which being very comfortable have doubled in price over the last 3 to 4 years.

Antique Oak Chair, Country Oak Chairs,  Charles II Armchairs

Mid-17th Century chair in oak, with elaborately carved back.
The earlier 17th century forms of chair were not dissimilar from this, with the exception of the elaborate winged scrolls on the uprights. Earlier chairs tended to be simpler, with square backs and the decorative areas were less profusely carved. Later in the century the carving exhibited a variety of motives. Note the heavy construction, with column turned legs and square stretchers. Simpler chairs have ’scratchings’ indiamond or other shapes in place of the carvings. Large quantities of these chairs were made, often with dates and initials of owners. Some are decorated with inlays of box, holly, (white) and ebony (black) in geometrical and floral designs. Country makers continued to produce them until the early 18th century.
Price Range: very wide and geared to quality of inlay and carving. Prices relate to highly carved versions; simple ones with scratch decoration are to be found at.
Victorian ‘improvers’ tended to add initials, dates and carving to simple chairs.
Mid-17th century chair. Note the diamond-shaped scratch decoration in the panelled back and solid pegged seat. The front legs are turned in rather bulbous baluster fashion, but the joints remain square and the pegs in the floor-level square section stretcher tenon joints can be seen. The seat is very worn but the remains of the moulded edge can be seen along the rear left-hand side. The front rail is carved in the same decorative manner as the back and shaped on the lower edge; again the pegged tenon joints are evident.
A mid-17th century country oak chair of pleasing simplicity and robust construction. The legs are still column turned as in our previous example and left square at the joints for the tenons, which were pegged. The back is panelled and without decoration. Not a popular collector’s chair at present but still well within reach of the modest pocket.
An oak ‘Derbyshire Chair’ of c. 1650 showing the arcaded back and split baluster decoration on the uprights. Note that the seat is inset or dished to allow for a cushion.
Cromwellian chair demonstrating movement towards lighter design still based on turning. The twist turning was popular in the period and the piece is made of walnut, a wood much more commonly used in the 17th century than is generally supposed. The chair is covered with leather fixed to the frame with heavy nails. Not a chair commonly found in antique shops; it is of a specialist collector’s taste. Bobbin turning rather than twist is often found and beech as well as oak or walnut was used.
Cromwellian oak chair of country construction. Note the square outline and the retention of the floor level square stretchers. The back is straight and the turning simple.
A Charles II - c.1675 - oak chair of radical development. The design is of Continental influence and more continuous. Apart from being carved the design of the scroll both on legs, front stretcher and back, serves to obscure rather than emphasize the method of construction. Cane backs were introduced around 1665 and help to lighten the overall appearance. Twist turning is still evident as well as the square back leg and stretcher joints.
Simpler oak chair of Charles II period with cane back. The front stretcher is simply turned and the seat has been upholstered, perhaps later. The quality is indicated by the fine sweep of the arms and the execution of the carved top cresting rail.
An oak armchair of c. 1680. Note that the stretchers also exhibit twist turning as well as all the uprights. The back carving is well executed with the top rail and front stretcher showing two cherubs supporting a coronet. These chairs, taken singly, are still somewhat undervalued although sets are a specialist demand and command high prices.
Charles II chair of c. 1680 date. The rich ornamentation and crest on the head of the chair indicate that it was made for a rich man or institution. The use of figures for legs is very Continental and the gargoyle arm rests are not of English origin. It is nevertheless typical of the elaborate examples of the period and the general style adopted by the chair makers for the richer classes.
Late 17th century country walnut chair. Note the high back. Rather than incur the expense of the cane back of the town example the country craftsmen used vertical solid bars. The stretchers still follow earlier designs with simple turning and square sections at the tenon joints. The uprights are turned.
Three more late 17th century country chairs, in oak, showing the variations possible in the back. The squab seats have been added for comfort. It is interesting not only to see the similarity of leg and stretcher constructionbut the variations possible in the turning of them.

American Chairs About 1890-1940 - Art nouveau, Art Deco, Crafts Movement
Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the centre of the furniture industry, with Chicago as a breeding ground of reformist designers including Frank Lloyd Wright who stressed the need for good furniture that could be mass-produced with machinery and sold at reasonable prices.
In the 1890s there was a reaction against the historicism of the past half-century. American designers absorbed the principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement (see p. 68) and added touches from art nouveau (see p. 196), to which style C. Rohlf’s elaborately carved chairs, around 1898, were, perhaps, nearest.
In 1894, D.W. Kendall designed for the Phoenix Furniture Co. an oak armchair with cane seat and flat arms that proved popular well into the 1920s. Simply-made chairs, sold off from a Spanish mission in California, inspired J.P. McHugh, who worked in oak and ash; E. Hubbard at the Ryecroft Community, East Aurora; Gustav Stickley at his Craftsman Workshops, Eastwood. Comfort was catered for with club easy chairs and deeply sprung ‘Davenport’ sofas.
Following World War 1, industrial design created the cantilevered, tubular steel chair, but a public preference for something glamorous was catered for with Art Moderne (see p. 275) which, at its best, combined traditional craftsmanship with modern streamlining. The low sofa and easy chair with deeply
Right rocking chair, New York, about 1890.
Oak reclining chair, designed by Frank Lloyd I right, about 1902.
sprung seats and backs, padded arms and minimal feet, took the term ‘fully upholstered’ to the point where woodwork was seldom visible. A sofa designed by the Spanish surrealist Dali, inspired by the lips of the American sex symbol, Mae West, is a classic example of the high Art Moderne style.
Crafts Movement: Native hardwoods such as oak, ash. Cane, rush for- Folk weaves for upholstery.
Industrial Design: Tubular metal, mainly steel. Serviceable upholstery fabrics.
Art Moderne: Exotic woods and expensive textiles.
Crafts Movement: Construction frankly exposed to view. Some makers, influenced by Wright, abandoned conventional joints in favour of screwing sections together.
Industrial Design: When steel tubes took the place of timber, traditional methods were supplanted by metalwork techniques such as welding, bending.
Art Moderne: Traditional joints - mortise-and-tenon, dovetail - though often cut by machine.
Crafts Movement: Exposed construction sometimes exploited as decoration, for instance butterfly joints and dowel ends stained by Rohlfs in contrasting colours. Carving was used by some craftsmen, but rejected by the puritanical.
Industrial Design: Puritanism of a slightly different kind saw decoration as superfluous, but often achieved - almost by accident - a decorative effect from elegant lines and fine proportions.
Art Moderne: Essentially a decorative style, exploiting every available means to achieve its ends - disastrously so at the lower end of the market.
Crafts Movement: Veneers little used. Coloured stains, green expecially, as well as the usual browns. Varnish on cheaper lines, wax on up-market products.
Industrial Design: Chromium plating on tubular steel. Cellulose sprays on 1930s woodwork.
Art Moderne: Veneered panels often used to face the fronts of arms on sofas and easy chairs upholstered in futuristic patterns popular in the jazz age.
Best buys: Mission chairs, especially Roycroft, Stickley - but go for good craftsmanship rather than labels. Many opportunities in Art Moderne seating that needs re-upholstery.
CRAFT MOVEMENT
Craft Movement chairs are often difficult to date because some designs, such as Kendall’s, remained in production for 30 years. Chairs by Stickley are often labelled and can still be bought at reasonable prices.

AMERICAN CHAIRS About 1620-1690
Stools: Maple, oak, pine.
Wainscot chairs: Oak frames, pine panels in backs and seats.
Stick chairs: Maple, ash, oak frames; rush seats.
Peg-leg: Legs are turned or, more often, roughly rounded with a draw-knife, and driven through holes bored in the seat, so that their upper ends project very slightly above the surface; the fixing is tightened by driving a small wedge from above into the end grain of the leg.
An oak ‘Carver’ chair, about 1650.
Most of the seat furniture surviving from this period dates from after 1650 and chiefly comprises stools, chairs and armchairs.
Stools: I Fairly crude variations of the milking stool or ‘peg-leg’ type. 2 Joyned’ or joint-stools, also called coffin stools because a pair was often pressed into service to form a bier.
Chairs: I Rare, early ‘wainscot’ types with panelled backs and seats have turned legs, but were made by joiners. 2′Stick’chairs made entirely by turners. The Brewster armchair has spindles under seat, the Carver does not. 3 ‘Slat-backs’, also stick type, have shaped slats set between the uprights of the backs, and turned legs.
Long benches of this type were much less common in America than in England and Holland, and should be accepted as of American origin only if the evidence is very strong indeed.
Peg-leg stool with wedge.
Joined stools and chairs: Seat rails and stretchers have tenons cut at their ends which slot into mortises in the square sections, top and bottom, of the turned legs; the joint is secured with pegs driven through holes to penetrate the tenons (not to be confused with peg-leg construction, see above). The seat is similarly pegged to the seat rail.
Turned leg, mortised to receive tenons.
Stick: Stretchers, turned or rounded by hand, are driven into holes bored in the legs. Shaped slats, thin enough to be bent to curve outwards, are set in mortises cut in uprights of the back. In early armchairs, the arms are turned bars that slot into holes in the uprights and the arm supports. No pegging needed.
Wainscot chairs: Carved top rails occur only rarely, e.g. one at the Winterthur.
Stick chairs: Varied turnings include mushroom’ finials to arm supports. Slats shaped to several different patterns.
Oiled and waxed, varnished or painted.
Joined stools and wainscot chairs now too expensive to sit on. Peg-leg stools difficult to date, but good for a gamble. Stick and slat-back chairs can still turn up unexpectedly at bargain prices.
American Chairs   About 1690-1725
Black-painted William Mary banister-back armchair, about 1710.
American interpretations of the European and English (Charles II and William and Mary) baroque style are expressed in several new types of seating.
Slat-back chairs (see p. 293) continued to be made in great variety. New types included: square-backed Cromwell chairs with turned front legs, the seats and back upholstered, before 1700; a small number of high-backed chairs in the Charles II (Anglo-Flemish) style, with caned backs and seats, turned or scrolled legs, the armchairs with ‘ram’s horn’ arms, before 1700. Corner chairs with turned members and bowed backs, also in small quantities, from 1700. Banister-back chairs, from 1700 (see DECORATION). The day-bed  a couch for lounging on  before 1700 (see CONSTRUCTION). The New York waggon seat from 1720 (also made in other regions, such as Connecticut, Massachusetts); a crude prototype of the chair-back settee that served as seating in the house and, when lashed to a wagon, converted it into a makeshift carriage.
WAGGON SEATS
The waggon seat continued to be made well into the 19thC. Many offered for sale, though not fakes, are not as old as they are sometimes claimed to be. The hard use to which they were put means that early examples are seldom in pristine condition.
Replacement stool seats
Many experts (though not all) reject stools where the seat is secured by pegs driven in at the corners so that they penetrate the end grain of the legs, threatening to split them; such positioning, it is argued, occurs only when the original seat has been replaced clumsily.
Pegs on joint stool. The peg on the right is correctly placed.
Frames: Oak, walnut, beech, ash, maple. Slats: Hickory or ash (easily bent to shape when still green).
Turned spindles: juniper.
Upholstery (for Cromwell’ chairs): Leather or ‘Turkey work’  a hand-knotted imitation of Turkish carpets.
Caning (for baroque chairs and day-beds): Split and woven rattan cane.
A large Turkey work Carpet for the table and two doz. arm’d Cain Chairs are mentioned in the journals of the Burgesses of Virginia, 1702-12, in reference to the furnishing of the Council Chamber of the Capitol (first building) at Williamsburg.
High-backed baroque chairs: Front legs, whether turned or scrolled, often socketed into a flat seat-frame, instead of being jointed with mortise-and-tenon; likewise, the cresting rail of the back may be set on to uprights, instead of between them.
The day-bed: Essentially a chair with elongated seat and additional legs; the back, or bed-head, often hinged and fitted with a ratchet for adjustment.
Baroque chairs: Members turned, cresting rails arched and carved, ‘Spanish’ (also known as ‘Braganza’) feet shaped and carved.
Cromwell chairs: Varied turnings; ‘barley twists’ (spirals) were known as Crosswicks after the district near
Philadelphia where this speciality was practised.
Spiral twist leg.
Banister chairs: The back composed of split banisters (also known as balusters), produced by sawing the wood in half, lengthwise, lightly glueing the two halves together, turning on the lathe to the desired shape, then splitting them apart again. They are then set into the upper and lower rails of the chair-back with their flat sides facing inwards, so that no protuberances make for discomfort.
Split banisters: right, length of timber sawn in half, far right, halves reassembled for turning on lathe.
Right, rounded face; far right, flat face.
Baroque types often stained black and varnished, or japanned in imitation of oriental lacquer. Rural types oiled and waxed or painted.
Cromwell, high-backed and corner chairs, also day-beds, rare and highly priced. Best buy: individual slat-backs.
William & Mary maple day-bed, about 1725.
front leg socketed into seat frame.
Growing wealth created a demand for comfort, even luxury. Between 1725 and 1760, Boston alone gave employment to 38 chair-makers and 23 upholsterers. Regional differences became more marked in the work of Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Newport - the chief centres; for instance, New England side-chairs were taller and thinner than those of New York,
Attributions in this period are made by comparing examples with makers’ labels, for example William Savery of
Philadelphia: but names are sometimes bandied about for no better reason than to boost the price.
American Chairs  1725-1790
Left, Queen Anne walnut side-chair New York, Queen Anne walnut.
The Queen Anne style - merging, from 1760 into Chippendale - emphasised the S-shaped curve of the cabriole leg, a rounded seat and a swan-neck back with shaped centre splat (’fiddle back’) - a feature seen in many country-made chairs still retaining turned legs. In more sophisticated examples, the splats are ergonomically designed to suit the human spine.
Right, Chippendale mahogany side-chair, Philadelphia, about 1765-1770.
In the Chippendale period, the splat was fretted and pierced, and the cabriole leg slowly gave way to the Marlboro’ - straight, square in section but chamfered on the inside angle. Easy chairs have draught-excluding wings; a child’s version in solid timber has a hole in the seat to hold a pot.
In the 1780s, Daniel Trotter of Philadelphia was probably the maker of ladder-back chairs - sophisticated versions in mahogany of the country slat-back, with shaped and pierced slats and Marlboro’ legs. Country chairs of Windsor type, made with spindles of green timber socketed into bent frames, succeeded earlier stick types. Windsor settees were an alternative to the settle, high or low in the back, boarded or panelled.
Sophisticated settees; two main types:
Above, Chippendale soft, Philadelphia, 1775. The ‘chair-back’ or ‘frame’, conceived as two or three chair-backs conjoined.
Day-beds continued to be popular in the Queen Anne period, with fashionable splatbacks and cabriole legs.
Native maple and cherrywood substituted for walnut, the most fashionable wood 1725-50, and for mahogany, 1750-90. Upholstery materials ranged from leather and local worsted cloth to imported damasks, velvets and brocades. Stools, promoted to the parlour, had seats that, whether- or drop-in, were often covered in needlework made by the lady of the house.
Craftsmen did not at first trust the strength of cabriole legs with no underframing, and until 1740, many  in New England especially  continued to be united with turned stretchers.
As a means of joining the cabriole leg to the front of a curved seat, the mortise-and-tenon joint could be made to work only at the risk of weakening it, as too much of it had to be cut away to achieve the shape. Some makers compensated for this weakness by fitting a block inside. Others used a halving joint (a half-thickness of the side rail overlapping and glued to a half-thickness of the front rail). A cavity was then cut in the joint to receive the square at the top of the leg, shaped to a dovetail or tenon.
After 1760, the balloon shape of the seat was discarded in favour of an angular one, and in mahogany chairs of the Chippendale period, a conventional mortise-and-tenon joint is usual.
In Philadelphia in the mid-18thC, the regular method of joining the side-rails to the rear uprights was by means of a through-tenon, secured with pegs driven through holes in the side-rail. If the ends of the pegs and the through-tenon are visible, this is a sign of Philadelphian origin.
Queen Anne: Shells carved on knees of cabriole legs and often at the centre of the cresting rail which, in many New York examples, is pierced with two spaces flanking the shell. Feet were plain pads, carved lion paws or claw-and-ball. The Queen Anne style survived in Newport to the end of the Colonial period.
Chippendale: Splats fretted and pierced. Marlboro’ legs headed by Chinese fretted brackets, but cabriole legs with claw-and-ball feet persisted; in New York, they were carved with foliage down to the feet.
Queen Anne: Walnut veneers often used in splats and seat rails. Others with japanned decoration, usually in gold on a black ground.
Chippendale: Mahogany seldom used in veneer form on chairs. Walnut and mahogany surfaces rubbed down with sand or brick-dust, varnished, rubbed down again and wax-polished.
cabriole-legged types tend to fetch more money than Marlboro’, but much depends on detail. Windsor chairs made in great quantity and variety, but not cheap.
CORRECT CLAWS
In a well-carved claw-and-ball foot, the claw should appear to be grasping the ball with the strength of an eagle clutching its prey  a feature naturalistically rendered in Philadelphia, where the ball is flatter than in the rather square New York version. Newport claws have been unflatteringly described as limp. The differences are sufficiently marked to be acceptable criteria when making attributions.
Claw) and ball tool from a Chippendale side:-chair, about 1765-70.
CABRIOLE LEGS
Wing chairs with cabriole legs tend to command higher prices than ones with straight legs. Many of the latter type (A) have been glamorized by sawing off the legs and replacing them with cabriole legs (B), using dowels and/or hefty screws. The head of a screw may be visible but is more likely to have been countersunk and camouflaged with stopping wax. Dowels are out of sight, but if a flap of the upholstery is carefully lifted (C), it is possible to prove whether the cabriole leg and the square above it are of one continuous piece of wood, as they should be. If they are not, a human hair, pulled from your head and held taut, will penetrate the join (marked with arrows) that should not be there.
Wing chair with substituted cabriole legs.

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.