As early as the opening years of the eighteenth century there were upholstered chairs of a somewhat similar type to the so-called "grandfather" with scrolled arms or wings. The example we illustrate is representative of those which may be met with in the country farmhouse.

Ladder-back Types.—The ladder-back chair belongs to the northern half of England, and similarly the spindle-back chair is found in the same locality. The Windsor chair, on the other hand, is mainly confined to the southern half of the country. These are points which become noticeable after years of systematised research, and although nowadays these three varieties of chair may still be found, somewhat scattered, their real home and place of origin is as indicated. Another feature of interest is that both ladder-back and spindle-back varieties, with but slight differences, are found on the Continent.

It will be observed that this class of chair has a rush seat. This feature it has in common with the spindle-back chair.

The rush-bottom chair covers a wide area. It comes with an air of naïveté and rustic simplicity. One recalls the long lines of green rushes by the river-bank and the rush-gatherers in idyllic placidity slowly trimming the banks, disturbing coot and moorhen with their punt, and adding another human touch to the lonely angler. They are pursuing a calling as old as the river itself, and the use of rush for floor, for lighting, or for seating furniture, found occupation for generations of men plying curious trades, of which the plaiting of osiers into baskets and the thatching of cottage roofs may be numbered among the decaying industries. Indeed, this latter art and the making of birch and heath brooms may be almost said to be extinct. A good artisan who can thatch in the old artistic style is much sought after. Of course ricks have still to be thatched, but the picturesque skill of masters of this old-world craft is absent, and corrugated iron sheets have found favour in lieu of the old style.

The ladder-back chair is, as its name denotes, decorated with horizontal supports, ladder fashion. These are capable of the most pleasing variation. The perfection of form of this type is seen in the arm-chair illustrated p. 237. The well-balanced proportion of the ladder rails is a test as to the excellence of the design. They are not meaningless ornaments put in place, unthinkingly, to create a new style. The two examples illustrated on page 235 show other types of the ladder-back chair. The left-hand one shows the later stages in the development of the design, and its top rail is of the Sheraton period. The right-hand one, with arms, is composite in its character, and is in date about 1820, and exhibits a touch of the Sheraton slenderness of style in the splats and the round turning of arms. Both examples show the quaint survival of the Queen Anne foot. The ladder-back form survived the eighteenth century and lasted down to within fifty years ago, when it became merged into that of the Windsor chair.

The Spindle-back Chair.—The spindle-back chair is of long lineage. As early as the reign of Charles I. this type was known. There is still treasured in America the chair of Governor Carver, with simple turning in legs and back, which practically consisted of upright posts rounded and having slight ornament. The back was set with "spindles." The older types of these chairs had thick upright posts, the back and back legs being two posts and the front legs, continued upward beyond the seat, forming supports for the arms. These posts are often six or seven inches in circumference, and belong to early-Jacobean days. The type found its way to America in Puritan days and has continued to be a favourite. Hickory wood was used for American specimens, and considerable attention has been paid to this form of chair and its varieties, the differing heights of the posts and the number of the spindles and their character, by American collectors. In England examples are not easily found of early date. The examples illustrated (p. 235), a Nursing Chair on rockers and an ordinary Spindle-Back Chair, are of eighteenth-century days, and are sufficient to indicate the type of chair, but these two represent the style when it had become of more general use. Practically it was not until the eighteenth century that such types were commonly used in cottages and farmhouses.

These turned chairs, turned in every portion but the rush seat, lend themselves to the above-mentioned two styles of treatment. Their upright posts forming the open back can be treated with vertical splats divided by horizontal divisions, or they can, as in the ladder form, receive horizontal splats. The complete simplicity of this attitude towards the back absolved the homely cabinet-maker from dangerous experiments. Avoiding curved backs, he had not to face the intricacies of the nicety of balance in the splat. Altogether it was a very satisfactory solution, and in practice resulted in the production of a wide range of chairs, differing in slight details but well within the range of the local workman's art.

The unassuming simplicity of this class of chair made its appeal to Madox-Brown, who held that simplicity and utility were the two desiderata, united with soundness of construction, for domestic furniture. Veneer was as abhorrent to him as to all genuine lovers of the artistic. "Let us be honest, let us be genuine in furniture as in aught else," were his words. "If we must needs make our chairs and tables of cheap wood, do not let them masquerade as mahogany or rosewood; let the thing appear that which it is; it will not lack dignity if it be good of its kind and well made." Accordingly he put his theories into practice and designed some furniture. In a chair in the possession of Mr. Harold Rathbone he has employed the rush seat and used spindles to decorate the back, and in another chair in the same collection he has adhered to the horizontal ladder-back style, coupled with the rush seat, with pleasing effect.

Corner Chairs.—Among interesting types of chairs often with lingering traces of the Jacobean style and additional features of splats that may be regarded as standing on the threshold of the Chippendale period, corner chairs stand in a class alone. The illustrations on p. 237 show some typical examples. The chair with the double tier is the oak adaptation of Chippendale with the retention of the old Jacobean form of support for the arm. These chairs with this added tier are often used as country barber's chairs. The rush-seated corner chair on the same page, probably made in Lancashire, is suggestive of the ladder-back form, and there are indications in its construction that it is subsequent to the Hepplewhite period.

With these notes relative to the evolution of the chair, and with carefully selected illustrations of types likely to be of use to the collector, enough has been said to whet the curiosity of the reader to study the matter for himself. It requires keen and discriminating judgment to allocate specimens with passing exactitude as to time and place. The taste for the subject must be natural and not acquired. Training alone will give the eye the readiness to detect false touches and modern additions. The search for bargains goes on apace, and those who enjoy stalking their quarry in out-of-the-way places have an exciting quest nowadays for fine pieces. To those with endless patience, forbearing under disappointment, and having plenty of leisure, the search will offer abundant delight, if, to quote Mrs. Battle, they enjoy "the rigour of the game."

CHAPTER VIII
THE WINDSOR CHAIR

Early types—The stick legs without stretcher—The tavern chair—Eighteenth-century pleasure gardens—The rail-back variety—Chippendale style Windsor chairs—The survival of the Windsor chair.

The Windsor chair in its early form is coincident with the early years of the eighteenth century. Its history and development therefore exhibit traces of the various styles in furniture which ran their courses throughout the century. It is essentially a chair which belongs to minor furniture, and in its use it is bound up with the country farmhouse, the country inn, or in the metropolis with the chocolate-houses and taverns, and later with the innumerable pleasure gardens which sprang up around the metropolis in the eighteenth century.

There is more than a strong suggestion that the type originated in the country. The first forms have a similarity to the easily made three-legged stools. The seat is one piece of wood into which holes are bored to admit the legs. The origin of the term "Windsor chair," according to a story largely current in America, is that George III., the Farmer King, saw a chair of this design in a humble cottage near Windsor, and was so enamoured of it that he ordered some to be made for the royal use. The chair had a singular vogue in America, and it is stated that George Washington had a row of Windsor chairs at his house at Mount Vernon, and Jefferson sat in a Windsor chair when he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

The Stick Legs without Stretcher.—Obviously this is the earliest type, and the illustrations of these primitive forms (p. 247) show the simplicity of the joinery. The chair on the left with its almost straight top rail suggests a probable date. It was not till 1768 that Chippendale made the first straight top rail in English furniture. The seat is of the saddle-form. The spindles at the back in the lower row taper at each end. It will be observed in all the types we illustrate in this chapter that the arms extend in one piece around the chair. Nor has every example the saddle seat. On the same page is illustrated one with a plain seat, but still having the stick legs set at an angle towards the centre of the chair.

Whatever interest attaches to this early type, from a collecting point of view, they cannot compare in beauty with the finer varieties of a later period, with cabriole leg and with pierced splat, displaying a pleasing diversity of patterns in pierced work, no two of which are always quite alike.

Eighteenth Century Pleasure Gardens.—There is no doubt that we owe the considerable output of Windsor chairs in the middle of the eighteenth century to the growth of coffee-houses, and especially the numerous tea and pleasure gardens on the outskirts of London and other great towns. These semi-rural resorts began to be in great demand as a recreation for jaded eighteenth-century town-dwellers. The nobility and persons of fashion had Bath and Tunbridge Wells to fly to for country air and open-air recreation. The citizen and mechanic, the society beau, and the politician, crowded to Ranelagh Gardens, to Vauxhall, to Sadler's Wells, and to Hampstead, to enjoy sunny afternoons and summer evenings in the open air, or to spend Sundays. It was the eighteenth-century diversion similar to the nineteenth-century Crystal Palace and the twentieth-century Earl's Court. To quote Mr. Percy Macquoid in his lordly work on English furniture, "So great were the numbers of visitors to these places that attention was called to their increase in one of the contemporary weekly journals, where a calculation was made that on Sundays alone two hundred thousand people visited the tea-gardens situated on the northern side of London; and as half-a-crown per head was probably the least sum expended by them, it can be no exaggeration to state that £20,000 on a fine Sunday was taken at these places of amusement. Many cheap chairs must have been required at such places of entertainment."

Between the year 1760 and the end of the century the Windsor chair was being made for general country use. "The backs and arms of these," continues Mr. Macquoid, "are made of hoops of yew, held together by a number of slender uprights and a perforated splat of the same tough and pliant wood; the seats were generally invariably of elm, as yew cut into a superficies of any size is liable to split; the legs and stretchers were generally of yew."

The Rail-back Variety.—We have alluded to the use of the rail placed across the back from the top rail to the seat, crossing the uprights. It is not an elegant device, but it was used as a means of strengthening the back. It seems almost unnecessary, although possibly these chairs received a good deal of rough usage. Later, when the fiddle splat began to be employed, this transverse rail—sometimes there were two used—was discontinued. An historic example of the chair with transverse rails is that which was once in the possession of Oliver Goldsmith. There is no doubt about the authenticity of this, as it was bequeathed by the poet to his medical attendant, Dr. Hawes, who, by the way, was the founder of the Royal Humane Society. Goldsmith told his farmer friends at his cottage at Edgware that he should never in future spend more than two months a year in London, and at the time of his death in 1774 he was negotiating the sale of the lease of his Temple chambers. This chair (illustrated p. 251) has a rather small shaped seat, curved arms, a top rail that is of exceptional interest considering the date, which is, say, from 1770 to 1774, perhaps a little earlier. This was at the commencement of the Hepplewhite period, which lasted till 1790. The year 1768 was, as we have already said, the date at which chairs with straight top rails, designed by Adam and executed by Chippendale, were first made. The turned legs are interesting, showing the hoofed foot, and the turned stretcher retains an earlier form. The chair is of soft wood, probably beech, and is painted green. It is preserved at the Bethnal Green Museum, with the distinctive label on the stand: "Oliver Goldsmith's Chair."

The Splat Back and the Cabriole Leg.—It is here that the Windsor chair assumes a character essentially charming and attracts the admiration of connoisseurs of styles that are peculiarly English. The splat back is a feature only found in English varieties of the Windsor chair. In America a great deal of attention has been paid to old types, and there the pliant hickory wood is used in the making of chairs of this form; but the splat back is never used in America, and when found by collectors there the piece is attributed to English manufacture.

The splat, with its varying forms, denotes the date of the chair. From 1740 to 1770 the form with cabriole legs and with finely ornamented fiddle splat was at its best. We illustrate a sufficient number of specimens to show how graceful and perfectly well balanced these chairs had become. In contemplating pieces remarkable for the highest style, it must be admitted that their artistry and their simple unaffected sense of comfort do make a direct appeal to those who are willing to recognise fine qualities in minor furniture.

The two chairs illustrated (p. 255) differ slightly in details of construction. That on the left has the plain urn splat, a survival of the Queen Anne type. The seat is finely shaped and the legs are cabriole form. The top rail is almost straight, and is ornamented at the two ends with turned discs. The three stretchers are turned, and in the adjacent chair the stretchers are similar, save in a slight variation in the pattern of the turning. But here the splat is perforated with an intricate design suggestive of the lines of Chippendale; the top rail is a departure in form, imparting a distinctiveness which lifts the chair from the ordinary type.

Chippendale Style Windsor Chairs.—The page of chairs (p. 257) tells its own story. The beautiful sweep of the curved back is always a sign of the old and true form. Later imitations or replicas seem somehow to lose this effect. It has been suggested that the back of this style was produced by the village wheelwright in horseshoe form, but possibly that is a conjecture which is more fanciful than real. It has also—collectors are often fond of inventing theories to fit little-known facts—been asserted that the wheel-back variety, which is of somewhat more modern growth, is due to the same origin. This wheel is fretted with six triangular openings. One chair on this page has the wheel unperforated. In the examination of the details of the four examples there is nothing of great importance to differentiate them from each other in construction. The two at the top are suggestive of Chippendale in the ornament employed in the splat. The lower two incline more to the slightly later Hepplewhite period. Of these the one on the left has only fourteen upright rails at the lower portion and six in the upper portion of the back, in comparison with sixteen and eight in the other chairs. The legs of this chair are exceptionally fine both back and front. The work in the splat is slightly suggestive of Welsh carving, especially that style associated with Welsh love-spoons.

Following the influence of Chippendale and Hepplewhite came the style of Sheraton, which after 1790 began to affect the character of some forms of minor furniture. That this was a very real factor is often shown most unexpectedly in cottage and farmhouse pieces. The satinwood and the painted panel, and the intricacies and subtleties of his employment of colour, were of course too far removed from the simple cabinet-work of the country maker to have the least effect upon him, even if he ever saw them. But the slenderness and elegance of the Sheraton styles did in a small degree have weight with cabinet-makers as a whole in the provinces. So that it is quite within reasonable surmise to attribute certain forms to the Sheraton school, or rather to the oncoming of the early nineteenth-century mannerisms. On p. 261 two examples are illustrated showing this influence. The one with the horseshoe back is devoid of the splat, which had now disappeared. The turned legs begin to show signs of modernity. The other has the top-rail familiar in later forms of cottage chair. The turned rails for the arms and the type of turning in the legs show signs of decadence. The fine days of the old Windsor chair were coming to an end.

The Survival of the Windsor Chair Type.—Apart from the love of the simple form and especially well-conceived design of the Windsor chair, which have made it at once the especial favourite of artists and lovers of simplicity and utility, it has won the practical approval of generations of innkeepers, who to this day store hundreds of chairs for use at village festivals. What we have said in regard to the popularity of the gate-leg table applies in greater degree to the Windsor chair. The industry of turning the legs and rails of this type of chair is still carried on in Buckinghamshire. Until recent years much of this turning was done by hand by villagers in the district surrounding High Wycombe, where the parts are sent to be finished and made up. To this day some of the old chair-makers use the antiquated pole lathe. But the chairs have departed from their old stateliness. It is true that they have survived, almost in spite of themselves. They are not now the objects of beauty they once were. But they have, by reason of modern requirements, found a fresh field of usefulness. Will it be supposed that the modern office chair is in reality a Windsor? An examination will at once show this, even in the latest American types. The saddle-shaped seat is there, the straight turned legs, and the back is the same except that the upper extension has disappeared and the old centre rail has become broader as a properly-formed rest for the tired clerk's back. A perusal of a few catalogues of up-to-date office furniture will establish this. Here, then, is the last stage of the country Windsor chair. The twentieth-century Windsor has come to town and graces the head cashier's private office in a bank or the senior partner's room of a firm of stockbrokers.

CHAPTER IX
LOCAL TYPES

Welsh carving—Scottish types—Lancashire dressers, wardrobes, and chairs—Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridge, and Essex tables—Isle of Man tables.

The charm of collecting cottage and farmhouse furniture lies in the wide area over which it is found. Those who have given especial attention to collecting it have learned instinctively to differentiate between the work of various localities. Some well-defined types of cottage furniture are only to be found in certain counties, and nowhere else. Take for example the ladder-back and the spindle chairs. The latter are usually found in the northern half and the former in the southern half of England. It is obvious that craftsmen developing on original lines, or on lines more or less apart from outside influence, must establish designs peculiarly identified with their field of labours.

The sturdy insularity of the British peasant, and his uneasy reception of foreign suggestion, have had a very pronounced influence upon his methods of work. He has the defects of his qualities, the stern, almost uncompromising conservatism in habit of mind and in his daily pursuits. A close study of the thoughts, and as far as is recorded the written ideals, of the rural labouring population exhibit an extraordinary fixity of purpose in clinging tenaciously to old customs. The country songs more often than not express disapproval of innovations and call up the memories of slowly vanishing customs. The farm hands recall wistfully the old style of Shearers' feasts and Harvest homes, when great festivities with song and dance and old country sports enlivened the company. In Yorkshire this was termed the Mel Supper, in Kent the Kern Supper, and in parts of the North of England it was called the Churn Supper. Annual feasts were given to labourers such as the Wayzgoose or Bean feast, which later name remains to this day. The good old days is a refrain not confined to the cottager in his relation with the farmer. The farmer, imbued with the same wistful regard for the vanished past, bewails the May Day tenants' feast of the eighteenth-century English squire.

We get touches of disdain for the oncoming fashion of seclusion which invaded the farmhouse in "A Farmer's Boy," by Robert Bloomfield. He laments that the annual feast of the harvest home had lost its former joviality. This was written in 1798.

"The aspect only with the substance gone." Evidently the mug that passed around was becoming a thing of the past.

The picture he draws of the farmer who, in face of prevailing fashion, "yields up the custom that he dearly loves" is pathetic. The long table and dining in common together had seemingly vanished. "The separate table and the costly bowl" touch the rustic poet's pride. He italicises the word "separate."

The same local types apply to the art of the potter and are well known to collectors. There are Sussex "tygs" and Nottingham "bears" and Sunderland and Newcastle jugs and mugs. Bristol had its characteristic earthenware, and the Lowestoft china factory was strongly Suffolk in its homely inscriptions with a touch of dialect.

Welsh Carving.—Wales is famous for the abundance of the oak farmhouse furniture proudly kept to this day in families who have held the same homestead sometimes for centuries. One of the most noticeable features is the elaboration of the carving and its native representation, coarsely carved, without foreign influence, of birds and beasts and heraldic monsters which largely figure in the decorative panels of chests, and especially dressers. So popular was oak that it might almost be advanced that there never was any mahogany in Wales. But it is indisputable that the great outburst in carved mahogany chairbacks coincident with the advent of Chippendale and the publication of his Director, never penetrated Wales, although it led to the foundation of a remarkable school of woodcarving on the new lines in Ireland, known as Irish Chippendale, a study of which can be made in Mr. Owen Wheeler's volume on old furniture.

The intense love of the Welsh woodcarver for intricacy is hardly less than that of the sturdy Swiss craftsmen environed by mountains. Perhaps the long winters and the solitary life influence the development of individual character in the applied arts. The Welsh love-spoons of wood, linked together and exhibiting delicate pierced work and minute carving of no mean order, are among other attractive specimens of native art. Ironwork of fine quality is also to be found in Wales.

A carved oak chest of Welsh origin, dated 1636, with Welsh inscription on lid, is illustrated (p. 269). The table on which it stands is of a later date. The carving in this piece is delicate and the middle panel is typical of the representation of birds and foliage. The Welsh cupboard on the same page typifies the coarse woodcarving associated with Welsh farmhouse art. In style this really belongs to a date not later than 1650. But it is dated 1710 and bears the initials "I.S." This is an interesting example, showing how middle-Jacobean styles lingered in country districts remote from outside influence until the early eighteenth century.

An elm wardrobe, probably about 1670 in date, shows another type, but still retaining the coarse character of its carving and its well-filled panels and uprights (illustrated p. 273).

Scottish Types.—Scotland has antiquities of her own which are closely allied to those of all the Gaelic races. As with Welsh carved farmhouse furniture, there is a marked leaning towards coarse style. As a rule it is too utilitarian in appearance to display much carving. The spinning-wheel is still found in farmhouses, and is still used in Harris and the outlying islands. Sometimes these old Highland spinning-wheels come into the market with the smooth surface worn by generations of workers, a surface impossible to reproduce. The Scottish ironwork is especially interesting. Perhaps the most curious of the Scottish antiquities is the crusie. This is undoubtedly a survival of the classic oil lamp. It consists of a shallow trough with a spout in which the wick stands, the oil being contained in the trough (see illustration, p. 289).

Lancashire Furniture.—The especial characteristics of Lancashire-made furniture are a strong leaning to solid structure and a very noticeable reticence in carving. Well-balanced as a rule, and possessing good joinery, they have been favourites with collectors of furniture designed for modern use. A Queen Anne oak dresser illustrated (p. 135) shows this Lancashire sturdiness at its best. This style of large dresser with cabriole legs is associated with Lancashire cabinet work.

A Lancashire dresser, the date of which is from about 1730 to 1750, shows the oak dresser inlaid with mahogany. The carved pediment and the carved underwork beneath the drawers mark this as an unusual specimen (p. 273).

A typical Lancashire oak settle is illustrated (p. 279), showing the Jacobean style in the carved work and in the arms. In date this is about 1660. It will be noticed that the front of the seat has a row of holes, which, prior to the upholstered cushion, a later addition, were intended for ropes to support a cushion, much in the same manner as the iron laths of a modern bedstead.

On the same page is illustrated an oak chest of drawers of Yorkshire origin, in date about 1770. Its plain lines suggest the Hepplewhite types of subdued character.

In regard to spindle-back chairs, Lancashire offers distinctive varieties. Two examples are illustrated (p. 275) as indicating this local type.

Three Legged Tables.—Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridge, and Essex have produced a type of tables termed colloquially "cricket tables," possibly because the three legs are suggestive of three stumps. The term is a foolish one and not very appropriate. A very interesting flap-top table with the three flaps to turn down, illustrated (p. 275), is a very rare Hertfordshire example. This is small in size, having only a diameter of two and a half feet.

Two other tables, one in date about 1700 and the other, of slender form, in date about 1750, are typical of this class of table. A very interesting table is a specimen from the Isle of Man having three carved legs with knee-breeches and buckle shoes.

Sussex is also well-known for her ironwork (see Chapter X.).

Norfolk and Suffolk used to have a class of oak furniture of quaint type, less cumbersome than the Welsh. A type of Sheraton Windsor chair, often inlaid with brass, used also to be found there.

On the whole, those localities which are removed from important towns are the richest in cottage furniture, for example, Wales, Devonshire, Cumberland, Northumberland, and parts of Yorkshire. In places, where the prosperity of the peasants is of long standing, the cottage furniture has been maintained whole almost until the present day.

Altogether the study of local types affords considerable scope for critical study. It is essential that such pieces should be identified and classified before it is too late. Rapidly all cottage and farmhouse furniture is being scattered over all parts of England. Collectors transfer furniture from the North to the South, and the rural treasures of the peasant have been brought to towns and dispersed to alien districts. The Education Act of 1870 and the halfpenny newspaper have brought town fashions to the door of the cottager, and the motor has laid a heavy tribute on rustic seclusion.

CHAPTER X
MISCELLANEOUS IRONWORK, ETC.

The rushlight-holder—The dipper—The chimney crane—The Scottish crusie—Firedogs—The Warming-pan—Sussex firebacks—Grandfather clocks.

The everyday iron utensils and implements of the cottages were simple. It is one of the curious features of the English peasantry that just as they clung to their oak of generations back when mahogany was in vogue, so they adhered tenaciously to ironwork of almost mediæval character when other metals were in fashionable everyday use. Thus the cottager did not feel the oncoming desire for the brass, or later silver and plated candlesticks, but remained firm in his affection for the rushlight-holders in iron, the same types which his ancestors had used, and the firedogs and firebacks of earlier type remained to decorate his hearth. Thus ironwork and rarely brasswork form the sum total of the metal portion of cottage furniture. We will deal with these various utilitarian objects one by one.

It must be remembered that the country farmer was not familiar with ready-made candles, and it probably no more entered his head to purchase candles in a town than it occurred to him to do other than bake his own bread. The cottager therefore made his candles for himself. If he were well-to-do and could afford to entertain his friends in modest fashion, he would doubtless like to illuminate his table with candles of symmetrical form. In which case he would use a candle-mould, and the wax bought in towns would serve for this purpose. But he was not always so rich, and perhaps he was happiest of all with the faintly glimmering rush dips which his forbears used. These afforded a rough-and-ready form of lighting. They burned and spluttered like a torch or flickered faintly as the tallow grew thin. Their form closely resembled an amateur's first attempt at making a cigarette. They were made in the following manner: the thin wirelike rushes which grew by the water's edge were gathered and stripped of their green surface till only the soft white pith remained. This served as a wick. The wax was then melted over a fire in a trough or candle-dipper, of which an illustration appears (p. 289).

Across this long receptacle the pith wicks were laid till the wax soaked into them. They were then taken out for the wax to cool and were dipped once or twice afterwards in order to form their outer coating. By such a primitive process a kind of thin taper was formed. It was not parallel along its sides, but bulged and narrowed throughout its length in primitive manner.