High Wycombe is a market town in Buckinghamshire that became the most important centre of chair making in Britain, closely associated above all with the Windsor chair. Its prosperity rested on the extensive beech woods of the surrounding Chiltern Hills, which supplied the timber for turned legs, stretchers and spindles.
From the eighteenth century, turners known as bodgers worked in the woods producing chair legs on pole lathes, while workshops in the town made seats, bows and backs and assembled the finished chairs. By the nineteenth century High Wycombe was producing chairs in enormous numbers, supplying homes, inns, chapels and institutions across the country, and the industry expanded into a wide range of furniture. Twentieth-century firms based in the town include Ercol, founded by Lucian Ercolani, and Parker Knoll, among many others. Chairs from the area are typically of beech and elm, sometimes with yew or fruitwood on better examples. Collectors of Wycombe chairs look for good turning, a thick saddled elm seat, an attractive colour and patina, and occasionally maker's stamps on the seat edge. The local museum preserves much of the history of the trade.
