A Windsor armchair of yew, beech and ash, with tall comb-back and central pierced splat in Chippendale style.

High-back Windsor armchair, with pierced, double-height splat, the legs shaped with a draw-knife and joined by a curved front stretcher, with two stretchers joining this to the back legs, the back with spindles in two tiers, each shaped with a draw-knife. The back and legs are heavily raked. The front legs show a single ring and concave turning, the back legs are shaped with a draw-knife. The rails and spindles of the back are in yew, the chair-rail bowed, the arms supported on crook-shaped supports. The front legs are in beech, the back legs and the splat in ash. The saddle-carved seat, of elm, is bell-shaped in plan. The two sections of the splat are not closely associated in design, the top splat being more elaborate, deriving from the kind of splat designs published by Thomas Chippendale in the mid-eighteenth century. The turnings of the legs, with a single ring and elongated concave turnings, is typical of Windsor chairs made in Lincolnshire.

Given by F.L. Lucas

Thomas Simpson (1797 or 1801-1878) was a cabinet-maker in Boston, Lincolnshire, working from 1819 to 1856. He worked in turn in workshops in the High Street, York Street and the Market Place. At various times he was recorded as a cabinet-maker and joiner as well as a chair-maker. From 1856 the firm was recorded as Simpson & Son and it was last recorded in 1892.
This chair was given to the Museum, with two others (W.8-1918 and W.9-1918) by Frederick Louis Lucas. See Nominal File MA/1/L2213, Registered File 18/608. At the time, they were all thought to be 'Wycombe chairs'.

This chair was lent to the Geffrye Museum, London, from 1978 to 1995 (Registered File 78/204).

What we now called Windsor chairs were made in a large number of regions of England from the early eighteenth century. They were distinguished by the fact that most of the pieces of the chair were created by turning. In simple chairs, only the seat might be sawn and shaped with an adze. What is common to all Windsor chair is that the back uprights do not run up to form the back. The legs are jointed through the seat or into the underside of it, and the frame of the back joined down into the top of the seat at the back. Styles of chair varied from region to region and often adopted elements from more sophisticated chair design, such as cabriole front legs and carved and pierced back splats.

Windsor chairs of varying quality and sophistication were used in all sorts of houses and in public places. They might be provided for hall use or servants' use in country houses and for general use in less grand houses. By the nineteenth century they were made by the million for institutionsl use and for public houses.

The parts of a Windsor chair were often made by different craftsmen within a workshop and as the nineteenth century saw the gradual industrialisation of the trade in certain areas (particularly High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire), the making was increasingly divided into separate tasks and stages.

Windsor chair making also flourished in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire in the nineteenth century until about 1880.

A Windsor chair is one in which the uprights of the backframe and the legs are jointed from above and below into the seat. The back legs do not run through into the uprights of the back. Usually, the legs are turned or, as the front legs here, or shaped with a draw-knife, like the back legs and splats. Occasionally Windsor chairs have cabriole legs at the front, narrowing to a club foot. Windsor chairs have been made all over Britain since the early 1700s and the craftsmen in different areas have developed particular forms and styles of decoration. Individual workshops can frequently be identified from such details as the pattern of turning on the legs.

This chair is typical of chairs made in Lincolnshire. These are generally similar to Windsor chairs made in the Thames Valley, with minor differences, such as plain back legs and the tapering of the edges of the upper hoop of the back at the point where it is jointed into the arm bow. Thomas Simpson, who stamped his name on the side of the seat, worked in Boston, Lincolnshire, from about 1819 to 1860, latterly in partnership with his son.

W.7-1918