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A dining chair is chosen from the front and lived with from the back. Pushed in under a table, six of them show you nothing but their backs, and in a room that opens into a kitchen or a sitting area the backs are what most of the house sees most of the time. Coach House starts from that half of the chair. The back is a solid panel rather than an arrangement of open rails, with carving worked into the top panel, so the chair reads as a piece of furniture from behind rather than a set of sticks.
What is actually in the range
Two chairs: a carver with arms, and a single without. That is the whole of the Coach House name. There is no bench or stool carrying the label, though a piece can be made to sit with the chairs if a room wants one. What the range gives you is a pattern for a set, not a fixed catalogue item, and the set is then drawn around your table rather than around a standard.
The carved top panel
The carving in the top panel is the one decision that changes how the whole set looks. It can be taken as it stands, simplified, or replaced with a detail of your own, which in practice has included a crest or a monogram. Simplifying it does not make the chair a different chair; the weight and the solid back are still doing the work, and the panel simply reads quieter across a run of six or eight.
The solid back has a practical side as well. Chairs that spend part of their life against a wall, or that are seen from a hallway or a landing, look considered from behind rather than skeletal. It is the reason the range suits open-plan rooms, where a chair has no back of house.
Seats: drop-in, wrap-around or fully upholstered
Three seat treatments are offered. A drop-in seat sits into a rebate in the chair frame and lifts out, which is the easiest of the three to recover later. A wrap-around drop-in takes the covering over the edges of the seat frame so the timber rail is less visible. A fully upholstered seat is worked as part of the chair.
You can supply your own fabric, or take leather from us. Upholstery is fitted once the frames are already underway, which means the covering does not have to be settled on the day the order is placed. Clients regularly use that gap to live with two or three samples on a chair they already own before committing.
Sized against your table, not to a standard
Seat height and width are set against the table the chairs will be used with. That sounds obvious and it is where sets most often go wrong: a chair drawn to a generic height under a table with a deep frieze rail or a thick top leaves nowhere for a person to put their knees. If you already have the table, we work from its measurements. If the table is being made at the same time, the two are drawn together, and the room is measured before either is settled.
How many carvers, and what they sit at
Any combination of carvers and singles is possible. Two carvers with six singles is the common shape of an order, but sets go out with one carver, and with none at all where a table has a wall along one side. Most Coach House sets are ordered for refectory tables, farmhouse tables, or the Pendleton range, all of which have enough presence to carry a chair with this much back to it. Against a very light, fine-legged table the effect can go the other way.
Timber, finish and matching what you already own
The chairs are made in oak, cherry, mahogany or walnut. Oak is the most robust of the four and the usual choice against a country table. Cherry darkens over the years to a deep reddish brown. Mahogany is the most formal. Walnut carries the strongest figure, which on a carved panel is worth seeing in the timber before you decide. Finishes run from polished through painted, limed, sand-blasted, rub-through paint and natural, and a colour can be matched to a sample you send in.
A good proportion of chair work is adding to a set that already exists, whether that is four inherited chairs that need to become eight, or new chairs that have to sit alongside an older table. That is ordinary work here rather than a special case, and the way we go about matching antique furniture applies to chairs as much as to cabinets.
The awkward parts, said plainly
Arms are the detail people underestimate. A carver has to clear whatever is under the table, so the height of the arm and the depth of the table frieze have to be considered together, and there are tables that will simply not take an armed chair without the arm stopping short. We would rather raise that at drawing stage than deliver eight chairs and two that do not push in.
The other thing worth knowing early is that nothing is held in stock. Every chair is made to your specification, drawn in CAD and then again at full size as a rod before any timber is cut, and once drawings are approved and making has begun the set is not returnable. Anything damaged, faulty or wrongly described is put right. Delivery is included on orders over £2,500 within 200 miles of Mickfield. Chairs travel with one driver, so for a set of eight it is worth having someone on hand to help carry them in.
Time and price
A standard design is normally twelve weeks from order to delivery, and fifteen or sixteen when the workshop is busy. A one-off, meaning a chair drawn from scratch rather than adapted, usually adds around four weeks. Dates are confirmed when the order is placed. Price is given on request, because it depends on size, timber and finish, and a written quotation normally follows within a few working days.
If you are weighing this up, the useful first step is small: ask for timber samples and put them on the table the chairs will live with, in that room, in daylight. Oak and cherry look like different propositions in a north-facing kitchen than they do on a screen. The catalogue and a visit to the workshop by appointment can follow once the timber is settled.