CHAIRS  Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and after : 1860-1930
The reader is not going to be bored by another harangue on the differences between the Arts and Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau. That is done frequently throughout other sections of the book. Most of the chairs here will be known loosely as ‘art nouveau’ by [...]

CHAIRS  straight front legs, Victorian
Chairs with straight front legs in this section are generally dining chairs but, obviously, occasional chairs of this type exist as well. The variation in style is greater and most of the major schools of influence had their
effect on the dining chair. Indeed, the almost sacred aura connected with the business [...]

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 [...]

CHAIRS About 1815-1860
Above, an Austrian Biedermeier sofa, about 1820,
french Charles X mahogany ,armchair, about 1825.
Biedermeier (post-Empire) style in Austria, Germany, Scandinavia, 1815-35. Chairs – mostly without arms – have square-section legs, straight or slightly splayed, and low backs with top rails projecting at sides beyond uprights, enclosing lyre, vase, dolphin or triple reed motifs, or [...]

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: 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 [...]

CHAIRS: VICTORIAN BALLOON-BACKS
1840-1885
The most familiar Victorian chair, made in various forms and for a variety of rooms, long after its rococo or ‘Old French’ style was generally unfashionable. The rounded seat and waisted back reflected contemporary
dress fashion.
The majority with slender cabriole legs flowing down from serpentine seat rails and ending in neat, slightly pointed French-type, [...]

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, [...]