If you look at the chair above and think “Thanksgiving” or “apple picking in New England,” there’s a good reason for that! While the Windsor chair may evoke a New England country B&B, as the name suggests, the form is actually English. In 18th-century England, the chairs were used in the Windsor castle garden. They soon became popular garden seats throughout the country and were often painted green or simply left to weather. By the late 1750s, the English Windsor chair was ubiquitous indoors as well as outdoors and would have been used everywhere from inns and taverns to libraries and meeting houses. Images above, from top: This ca. 1739 drawing by Jacques Rigaud shows a lord and lady being wheeled through the garden in Windsor chairs (from The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The presentation of the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress by Edward Savage (from the Library of Congress). Now let’s address that “American as apple pie” sensation you may get from looking at these chairs.
There’s a good reason for that, and it’s two words: founding fathers. In North America, the Windsor chair form was first used in Philadelphia where the chair became hugely popular around the time of the Revolution. The chairs were such an important part of the life in the new country that Thomas Jefferson was said to have written the Declaration of Independence in one of these chairs and Martha Washington had needlework cushions made for her bow-back Windsor chairs. (Oh and that’s Benjamin Franklin sitting in one above!) One of the major selling points of the Windsor chair was its portability. Light and easy to carry to from room to room, it was extremely popular in both England and in North America. The Windsor chair is made from multiple woods — the legs were hardwood, while the seats were a soft wood. (Necessary for that lightness factor.) The main design difference between the English and American versions is the use of a splat (that middle piece in the back of the chair) in British chairs while Americans preferred the low-back Windsor.
Woods Used in British Windsor Chairs Woods Used in North American Windsor Chairs Images above from left: English Wheelback Windsor Arm Chair, $2250; English Windsor in Elm. Just for fun here are a few different types of Windsor chairs. The classic Windsor is the bow-back. There are two bow-back versions above. Chairs — There are plenty of books on Windsor chairs but if you’re as chair-crazy as I am, this is the book for you — there’s a little bit about nearly every chair you can imagine. This is my favorite book of the moment! CLICK HERE for Windsor chair sourcing information! So now that you know the history of the Windsor chair, the real question is, how do you get your own? Here are three ways that you can bring a little Americana into your home. Image above: Sneak Peek: Laura Zindel. While you’re unlikely to actually start collecting Windsor chairs, you never know what you might turn up in a flea market or thrift store. And although most of the time you’re not going to be stumbling upon 18th-century Windsor chairs (a girl can dream, right?), here are some tips for recognizing the real thing, but just in case:
1. Period Windsor chairs, when they were new, were painted — they were frequently made from different types of wood and the paint tied the pieces together. Obviously, original paint on a chair would greatly increase its value! 2. Chairs made of poplar — a locally-grown Pennsylvania tree — could be an indication that the chair was an early Philadelphia example. Images above: 1. English Windsor Chair, ca 1750, $4,850; 2. Pair of Early 19th c. Rodback Windsor Side Chairs, $3,350; Antique English Windsor Chair; 4. Twenty Four Early 19th-Century Style English Windsor Chairs, $2600; 5. 19th c Spindle Back Windsor Chair, $1250 There are a couple of different options for purchasing new Windsor chairs: You can buy mass-market versions of the chair (if I was going this route, I’d sand the chair down and paint them a bright fun color). If your budget allows, you could also purchase a chair from a local craftsperson (I love the option above with the writing arm and the drawer — so cool!)
See this Regional List of Windsor Chair Makers to find someone near you. Two of my favs are Windsor chair shop in Pennsylvania and Windsor chair makers in Lincolnville, Maine. Images above: 1. Madison Park Tall Spindleback Chair, $100; 2.Windsor Chair, set of two, $65; 3. Windsor Chair with Comb, Writing Arm and Drawer, $1,480; 4. Windsor Hoopback, $699; 5. Continuous Arm Chair with Green Milk Paint, $1090 If you don’t want to go on the thrift-store hunt or buy a new Windsor chair, you could make your own! While this might be a little more difficult than the average DIY project, there seems to be no shortage of Windsor chair making instructors. You can also attend workshops like the American Windsor Chair Workshop which is located an hour north of Ashville, North Carolina. (Not to get sidetracked but they also have classes in everything from coppering to cooking!) Good luck on your Windsor chair hunt! Images above: Windsor Chair resources.While researching her book, Killer Stuff and Tons of Money, Maureen Stanton came across all sorts of characters.
For years, she shadowed her antiques-dealer friend she calls “Curt Avery,” and he gave her an insider’s view of what goes on behind-the-scenes in the antiques world—including at Brimfield Antiques Show in Massachusetts, one of the largest flea markets in the United States. Most of the dealers she met were like Avery, honest businessmen who genuinely love to share the history of objects. “If people are enjoying these chairs as if they were real antiques, what’s the difference?” Others were less honorable. In the book, Stanton talks about a carpenter she calls “Wesley Swanson,” who builds new Windsor chairs and goes through extraordinary measures to pass them off as valuable antiques. (An example of a rare antique comb-back Windsor chair, with writing desk, is pictured above, from Chair Blog.) Most people have encountered a contemporary Windsor chair, as the light, easy-to-carry English design has been reproduced for centuries. But since this particular design goes back to the 1700s, the earliest Windsors fetch big bucks, selling for $3,000-$5,000 apiece.
And in America, Windsor chairs were the seat of choice for the founding fathers. George Washington kept 27 Windsor chairs at Mount Vernon, while Thomas Jefferson is believed to have written the Declaration of Independence in a Windsor. When the Declaration was signed on July 4, 1776, the assembled men sat in Windsors. With the first Brimfield flea market of the season just around the corner (May 14-19), Stanton explains how a master faker works and how he justifies joining “the dark side” in his own mind. Stanton: Well, he is a master carpenter, and he’s been doing this for a long time. He also makes pottery and other ceramics as well. There’s nothing wrong with restoring an antique as long as you’re telling people you’re doing that. But he’s crossed over to the dark side, as Curt Avery says, because he’s doing this, and he’s putting a chair through auction and saying, “Well, it’s buyer beware. I don’t have to reveal this. I don’t have to label it as such because that’s the buyer’s business to know that.”
He’s really, really good at what he does and he’s passing this stuff at the top houses. Obviously, I think that’s ethically questionable. When he’s building a chair, he takes a long time and does everything very carefully. He takes perfectly green wood, and he has a way of aging it so that it’s out-of-round as if it’s aged a hundred years. He has a way of rusting up hardware. He’ll buy scraps and parts from people, or he’ll find an old piece of furniture, like another chair. And he can use the wood, nails, or hardware in the new piece that he’s making to make it look real. But he has made an old-looking Windsor chair of 100 percent new wood. He’s developed techniques for aging paints with blow dryers and things that. It’s hard to spot the fake aging process in wood unless you X-ray it. It’s hard to tell it’s been done to the paint unless you put the chair through chemical analysis. Stanton: He’s been a dealer for a long time, and I don’t think a lot of people know that he’s doing this now.
He’s still under the radar for a lot of people. The story about him has probably put a fear of Windsor chairs into people, but it should. They should be more careful. And Swanson would say things like, “Well, if I’m restoring it to such a level that nobody can tell, not even a top expert, it’s like that philosophical question about a tree falling in the forest. If no one can tell and people are enjoying these as if they were real, what’s the difference?” That’s the mentality he’s bought into. Master fakers are evil geniuses in their own way. I recently read a book called “The Poet and the Murderer,” about Mark Hofmann who forged the Mormon papers. But he also forged an Emily Dickinson poem and a bunch of other ephemera, such as important revolutionary times documents. The extent that he went through to make the documents look real, sucking the ink into the paper with a vacuum cleaner, is extraordinary. That’s the sort of thing that Wesley Swanson does with his woods and with his surfaces.
He takes the time to age it. He won’t let it go out the door if it’s not perfect. In some ways, you have to admire his mastery in terms of his restoration. But once the piece is restored, you can’t admire how he represents it because it’s wrong. Stanton: The more money you’re about to spend on an antique, the more you’ve got to be careful about knowing who you’re dealing with. At my level, it doesn’t matter if I buy something fake, because I’m not spending more than $50 or $100. But if you really are investing, and you’re going to spend $5,000 on a supposedly rare comb-back Windsor chair with a writing-arm desk, then you either ought to be expert enough to know—or know to call an expert—or you should know the person you’re dealing with. I’ve heard some readers saying, “Now I’m afraid to go out and buy antiques.” It’s just like anything, like hiring a lawyer or a doctor. Ten percent of the crowd is going to be bad apples, and the rest are generally good dealers.