Art Nouveau Chairs 1890-1920
Declining quality of commercial products blamed - often unfairly - on machine work. Reformist movement partly inspired by folk culture, but culminates in 1890s with international style taking its name from main outlet, la Maison de I’Art Nouveau in Paris.
Art nouveau: Paris designers; de Feure, noted for rich upholstery on neo-Louis XVI [...]

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 [...]

CHAIRS About 1770-1815
Designers converging on Rome in 1750s absorb ideas of classical Roman decoration and begin to apply them in 1760s to seat furniture with square, rectangular or oval backs; straight legs in place of cabriole. Neo-classical style international by 1770, identified with reigns of Louis XVI in France, Friedrich Wilhelm 11 in Prussia, Joseph [...]

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 [...]

COUNTRY: LADDER- AND SPINDLE-BACKS
About 1700-1939
Traditional ladder-back, spindle and other turned chairs were made in all parts of Britain throughout the 18th and 19thC. Although regional variations exist in the shape of turnings and so on, most follow the same basic patterns. Some arts and crafts designers were influenced by the tradition, and from the 1860s [...]

CHAIRS: READING, WRITING, DESK AND LIBRARY
About 1700-1900
Early-18thC ‘horseman’s’ or ”cockfighting’ chair.
Various gentlemen’s reading and writing chairs evolved during the 18thC for use in libraries and studies and, in the 19thC, in clubs.
‘Cockfighting’, ‘horseman’s’ and later, ‘conversation’ chairs, about 1700-1800: Fully upholstered pear-shaped seat, padded back with narrow base rising into flat curved section. cabriole legs, [...]

CHAIRS: UPHOLSTERED, WING (OR EASY)
About 1700 onwards
Deriving from adjustable-back French sleeping chairs of the 1670s and made in virtually standard 18thC form at various times until the present day, wing chairs were for relaxation, not formal use. The wings protected the sitter from draughts.
About 1700-1750: Cabriole legs, either plain with pad feet and turned stretchers, [...]

CHAIRS: UPHOLSTERED
About 1720-1840
Queen Anne side-chair, about 17.30.
Surviving upholstered chairs made for drawing-room use date mostly from after 1720 and, although originally made in sets, are more often found today in pairs, or even singles.
Many resemble contemporary dining-chairs in the design of legs and stretchers and the general shape of arms, but have fully upholstered seats [...]

CHAIRS: HALL AND PORTER’S
18thC mahogany hall chair - Regency hall chair with sabre legs - oak and mahogany hall chairs
Distinctive 18thC mahogany hall chair with a carved shell back.
18th and 19th century antique hall chairs designed to stand in the hall (also corridors and landings) of large houses. Used by servants and visitors of low [...]

ANTIQUE CHAIRS: CHIPPENDALE
Thomas Chippendale - rococo chairs, chinoiserie and Gothic chairs - Queen Anne chairs - mid-18thC chairs - Chippendale chairs reproductions
Chippendale chairs were originally produced in 1750-1780 by Thomas Chippendale.
Thomas Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director, published in three editions (1754, 1755 and 1762) had a historic influence on mid-18thC chair design. In it, [...]