In Regency days the classical ideas shown in the work of Hepplewhite and Sheraton developed into more directcopying of Greek and Roman styles, and so gives us what we call Regency and the French Empire: following which we start off on the complicated story of Victorian styles, which copied anything and everything and threw in a generous measure of its own.

Chairs in all these styles, of course, can be found today, at prices from 5,000 euro for a Hepplewhite dining set to half a crown for a cane-bottomed bentwood.

For those with country cottages or large kitchens there is that whole family of chairs which go under the name of “Windsor“. Legend says that they acquired it when one of the Hanoverian Georges sheltered in a cottage while hunting in Windsor Forest, was offered one of them to sit on while the storm abated, and ordered some for Windsor.

Antique Collector MagazineModest as this range of furniture is in intention—the work of “bodgers” in the beechwoods of Buckinghamshire and elsewhere—it has that kind of grace and refinement which arises from anything superbly designed for its job. Pieces are difficult to date closely for they have been made from the seventeenth century down to today; and the men who made them followed their own traditions and styles long after they had gone out of fashion in other areas.

But they do fall into classifications, and in fact you may know them by their parts. The backs may be from spindles, bobbins or slats and they have different types of cresting or arm rests. The most comfortable of them all for my money—although I have heard argument that it is not a true Windsor at all—is the ladder-back with a rush seat: it gives gratefully to the full figure, and in fact is a fine piece of engineering in wood and basket work.

Windsors have had a new lease of life since they became “collectable”. Their proud owners no longer scrub them at spring-cleaning time, but lavish as much care upon them as if they were of walnut or satinwood. Wood being the grateful thing it is, a few years of this treatment gives them the most wonderful patina.

There are all kinds of names for these pieces of furniture, designed either for one person to lie on or several to sit on together. The simplest of them all, the bench or form, goes wellalong the wall of the house. It can be in weathered teak or oak (give it a drink of linseed oil from time to time) or you can have itia painted whitewood. Your flagstoned kitchen will take well to a Windsor settee or perhaps a high-backed settle from some old country inn or Welsh farmhouse. This kind of furniture, it may be mentioned, can be bought new as well as old.

Those tired of the great padded Chesterfield might look carefully at some of the interesting shapes of Victorian sofas. In our smaller homes there is also much to be said for the love seat, an affair for two people which has been popular and very much used since Queen Anne’s day; not unlike it is the window seat with its upturned arms. Both of these can be found in Victorian and Edwardian versions. There are three-, four-, or even five-backed settees; and also combinations of stools and armchairs, like the “studio” sets of today but infinitely more graceful.

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