House of Windsor

I've got a problem with chairs. I have way too many of them. Even before I started dabbling in selling antiques and vintage stuff, I'd already developed a fairly strong chair fetish. It helped that at the time, I owned a big old Victorian in Keene with plenty of room for chairs, chairs and more chairs. Chairs are practical and they're useful; every room in your home probably has at least one chair in it. My taste in chairs really runs the gamut too. I love a mid-century wishbone-style dining chair, a well-loved old leather club chair with all its scuffs and scratches, a fancy French Bergère with all its upholstery and gilded charm. Heck, I even love old wooden benches and stools. Chairs are about the most useful type of furniture there is and can really set a distinctive style in a room. There's one chair I've always been a bit perplexed by and that's the Windsor chair. I've always believed a Windsor chair to be a fairly simple arched, slat-back wooden dining chair; and I thought the rounded back was what made it specifically a Windsor style chair. Turns out I was wrong. I'd often been confused when reading auction listing descriptions or price tags on chairs in antiques stores when a Windsor chair was being offered but looked nothing like what I think they should. I decided to do a little research. A Windsor chair is one that has a solid wooden seat into which the chair back and legs are "round-tenoned" or pushed into drilled holes in the seat versus the style where the back uprights and legs are continuous pieces of wood. Other common features of many Windsor chairs are a steam-bent wood frame back with spindles or a center splat and turned legs. The basic round-tenoned construction probably began as far back as ancient Egypt but the actual Windsor style originated in England in the 18th century, according to Wiki. The term probably comes from the port of Windsor in London where the chairs were shipped. The main period of production for vintage Windsor chairs was the 19th century and they typically were made from white pine, basswood or tulip poplar and most were painted to hide the various grains of the different woods used. Windsor chairs were typically both elegant and lightweight which appealed to the wealthy but their practicality and affordability made them accessible to everyone according to "Object Lesson: All About the Windsor Chair" by Benjamin Davidson and Pippa Biddle at www.themagazineantiques.com. English settlers brought their Windsors with them across the Atlantic and it wasn't long before the iconic chairs could be found hearthside in every home, surrounding tables in taverns and arranged in rows in meetinghouses. I now understand why I found the Windsor name so confusing. The chair backs come in many different shapes (sack-back, comb-back, fan-back, rod-backs and birdcage style are the most common) and crafting them from different types of wood was also intentional. The legs or "stumps" had to hold a person's weight and must be robust, and the arms, too, must be able to take a lot of pressure. Maple and yellow birch were used for these parts. The seat's wood should be soft enough to accept the tenons and be comfortable. The seat was often pine or poplar. The back spindles needed to be supple and bendable to allow people to shift in their seats. The graceful backs of the chairs were often oak, ash or hickory. Windsor chairs are tough and can survive centuries of use and, while they're still being produced today, an antique or vintage one will have stories to tell and welcome you to sit comfortably for a spell.