Chair making is the specialist craft of designing and constructing chairs, which demands particular skill because a chair must be strong enough to bear weight and movement while remaining light, comfortable and well proportioned. Historically it was often a separate trade from cabinetmaking, with its own workshops and traditions.
Two broad traditions can be distinguished. Joined chairs, made by joiners and cabinetmakers using mortise and tenon joints, include the oak wainscot chairs of the seventeenth century and the mahogany dining chairs of the Georgian period. Country chairs, by contrast, were often made by turners and chairmakers using green or seasoned wood, with turned legs and spindles socketed into solid seats or frames, as in the Windsor chair and the ladder-back and spindle-back chairs of the North West. High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire became the centre of English chair making in the nineteenth century, with bodgers turning legs in the surrounding beech woods and factories assembling vast numbers of chairs. Michael Thonet's bentwood techniques revolutionised production on the Continent. Collectors value good proportions, original surfaces, sound joints and regional characteristics, and sets of matching chairs command significant premiums, especially in larger numbers suited to dining.
