Tradition Windsor chairs originated in England in the early 1700s. As Brown tells the popularly believed story, "The king was riding his horse out on a rainy day and took refuge in a wheelwright's home, where he dried himself by the fire on a Windsor chair, probably a hoop back side chair." The king was George I and the rest was history after he returned home to Windsor Castle and commissioned replicas of the strong and graceful chair he so admired. Windsor chairmaking soon traveled to Philadelphia and then spread north through the colonies. "It was an important craft in a seatless colony,” says Chairmaker Greg Long of Houston, Texas, noting that the early colonists arrived in America with very few belongings, often no more than a single chest. Without strict standards imposed by the guilds in England, Wallace says, American Windsor Chairmakers introduced variety and innovation with new chair styles such as the continuous arm and rocker. According to Brown, the seven styles of Windsor chairs include the sack back, comb back, fan back, rod back, continuous arm, low back and bow back. Variations include settees and the addition of combs, rockers and writing arms. Even with different styles, the easily identifiable shape and form of Windsor chairs have made them an American icon, Long says.
Elegance Windsors are characterized by a shaped wooden seat, rakish turned legs and vertical spindles. Light and airy, they don’t block your dining room when used around the table and they don’t obscure your view when positioned in front of the window. They have a very open design that is almost sculptural, says Lois MacDonald, Vice President of Sales and marketing at Leonard’s Antiques in Seekonk, Massachusetts. As Brown points out, Windsor chairs are comfortable enough to use in a living room, and also functional enough to pull into the dining room when extra chairs are needed. Windsors are typically constructed with three kinds of wood to take advantage of varying degrees of strength and flexibility. Wood selection also depends upon the preference of the chairmaker and the wood available in the region. Seats are usually crafted of a soft wood like pine or poplar so they can be shaped. Chair legs are made of a hard wood with a tight grain that can be turned, such as maple, bitch, cherry or walnut. The uppercarriage is made of a bendable, hard wood with an open grain, like oak, hickory or ash. To hide the different types of wood used, the chairs were painted, according to MacDonald. Perhaps more significantly, painting brought the chair together in a single unit, emphasizing the element of line that is such an important trademark of the Windsor chair, says Long. Today, most chairmakers offer both painted and stained finishes to appeal to traditional and contemporary tastes. However, chairmaker Michael Dunbar of Hampton, New Hampshire, will not stain chairs for his customers. “If I stain a chair, I’m going to get the viewer’s eye looking at the grain of the wood, which is static,” Dunbar says. “They end up looking at the individual parts of the chair and they miss the greater composition that I’ve tried to create. “For somebody to take my chair and stain it, they have gone and bought something from me with the purpose of acquiring my understanding, my craftsmanship, the artistry, and then put on a finish that does everything to undo the artistry,” Dunbar adds.
Strength Windsor chairs are also known for their extraordinary strength and durability. According to Wallace, hundreds of thousands of the earliest Windsor chairs made in this country are still in existence today in private homes and museums. “In my showroom,” says Brown, “I frequently take a side chair and tip it over on its face and stand right up on the back of the seat and bounce a little just to illustrate the durability of the chair.” Windsor chairs should last for at least 200 years, giving new meaning to the phrase “pass down through the generations.” The chairs are ‘heirlooms that last,” Long says. Split wood provides the chairs with their hallmark of strength. Because the grain on a split piece of wood runs along a central axis and does not run out, it can be turned to a very thin width while retaining its great strength. Using a wedge and sledgehammer, Wallace splits wood he selects from the Appalachian mountains every other month.
Handcrafted Wallace finds that people really gravitate towards the Windsor chair. “It has a very historical context to it as part of its appeal,” he says. People marvel at the cleverness and common sense of the early craftspeople who made the chairs. Although Windsor chairmaking moved to the factories during the industrial revolution, the chairs are still handcrafted today using traditional tools and techniques. Some chairmakers craft their Windsors without any electrically powered tools. Others, like Brown, choose to use a mix of tradition and machines. Wallace uses 95% hand tools; his lathe is motor driven instead of hand-powered by an apprentice. As a result of handcrafting, Wallace says his chair seats have a sculpted look and the turned legs have crisp, sharp edges. “It’s a different look, it’s a different product,” he says. ‘Many of the manufactured chairs are wonderful and very beautiful and very well priced, but it’s a different product. They don’t approximate the originals very closely.” Long finds his deeply sculpted chair seats more comfortable than ‘slightly concave” factory-made seats. “Mine are actually scooped down quite a bit so you can sit in these chairs for hours on end and you won’t fall asleep and you won’t have that numbness of a hard wooden chair,” he says. Wallace notes that some chairmakers today prefer to use the term “benchmade” to describe their work, because “handmade” is sometimes used to describe chairs assembled with primarily premade pieces at a manufacturer. As opposed to manufactured pieces that have been finished with heavy machinery, Wallace says customers can still feel the tool marks on his chairs. He can either leave them rough or sand and scrape them smooth. Buying a handcrafted Windsor chair as opposed to one produced in a factory allows for unique variances. “I think different chairmakers have a different eye for how these particular chairs go together,” Wallace says. “Individual chairmakers can make chairs of the same style with a very different look, so you really get a personal expression.” As a result of individual styles and regional variation, it is possible to determine when and where early Windsor chairs were made.
Enduring Classics Although Windsor chairs originated in the Northeast, interest in them remains strong across the country. Long, who is the only professional Windsor chairmaker in Texas and also teaches across the country, says he sees widespread interest in the early American style everywhere including in the west. Wallace finds that even people with contemporary homes love the lines of Windsor chairs. “They’re so light,” he says. “When you put them into a room, they don’t have a tremendous mass to them. They’re very linear.” Whether placed in a colonial, contemporary or country home, Windsor chairs offer a long history of tradition, comfort, function and beauty. As MacDonald says, classics like the Windsor chair transcend all styles.
