Handmade Dining Chairs

Chairs are the part of a dining room you actually touch. They have to suit the table, fit the people who sit in them, and survive being dragged across a stone floor twice a day for thirty years. We make ours one set at a time, to order, in the pattern, timber, seat and finish you choose.

Most clients start with the table. If you have already chosen a dining table, tell us which one and we will show you the patterns usually specified with it.

Carver ChairsCarver chairs made to order in Suffolk — Cromwellian, panel back, Coach House, Caquetoire, Glendale, Chippendale-style, Oakamoor and Henbury patterns.Handmade Ladder Back ChairsLadder back chairs made to order in Suffolk — wavey line and ribbon back, singles and carvers, with rush, wooden or upholstered seats. Made to your size.Settles, Benches and StoolsBox settles, bench settles, panelled settles, long stools, joint stools and footstools, made to order in Suffolk in oak, cherry, mahogany or walnut.Handmade Windsor ChairsHandmade Windsor chairs made to order in Suffolk — stick back and splat back, three seat sizes, low and high back carvers and a child's carver. Ash frames.

The patterns we make

Windsor chairs — stick back and splat back, in small, medium and large seat sizes, with low and high back carvers and a child’s carver. Frames in ash.

Ladder back chairs — wavey line and ribbon back, single and carver, with a rush seat option.

Carver chairs — the armchair at the head of the table, in every pattern we offer: Cromwellian, panel back, Coach House carved top panel back, Caquetoire, Glendale, Chippendale-style, and the Oakamoor and Henbury stick backs.

Settles and benches — box settles, bench settles, long stools, joint stools and footstools, for the wall side of a long table and for halls.

We also make high and low back Cromwellian chairs, panel back singles and carvers, country and provincial Chippendale-style chairs, Barton, farmhouse upholstered, Gothic and rocking chairs. If you have seen a pattern in one of our collections and want it in another form, ask.

Seat options

The seat changes the character of a chair more than any other decision, and it changes the price. There are five.

Wooden seat. Solid timber, shaped and hollowed so it takes the sitter. Hard-wearing, and the traditional choice for Windsor and panel back chairs.

Rush seat. Hand-woven rush over the seat rails, as it has gone with ladder back chairs for centuries. Soft, quiet and visually much lighter than a solid seat.

Drop-in upholstered seat. A separate upholstered frame dropping into a rebate in the seat rails. The pad lifts out to be recovered without touching the frame.

Wrap-around drop-in seat. The same, but the covered pad wraps over the seat rails so the fabric shows on the outside faces. Softer in outline.

Fully upholstered. Seat and back both covered, with the show wood reduced to legs and arms. The option for a formal dining room, and the one usually specified for Cromwellian patterns.

You can supply your own material — most clients do — or we can supply leather. Send us the fabric, or tell us the colour and character of leather you want, and we will advise on the quantity before you buy anything.

Timbers

Oak, cherry, mahogany and walnut are the standard four, and every chair pattern is made in all of them. Ash is used for Windsor chair frames: it bends, it takes a shock, and a steam-bent ash bow is what makes a Windsor chair light enough to lift with one hand.

Specials, quoted on application: character oak; pippy oak in light, medium and heavy grades; oak selected for medullary ray; and clean timber with no knots at all — worth considering on a set, where you see the same detail eight times.

Finishes: polished, painted, limed, sand-blasted, rub-through paint, natural, or colour matched to a sample. We can match furniture that is 100 years old to new reproduction purchases made the year before.

Order timber and finish samples before you commit to a set. Eight chairs is eight times the decision.

Made to your size

Chairs are made to fit people and tables, not to a fixed drawing. Seat height, width and depth, back height and arm height are all adjustable. A dining chair seat sits at about 18in to suit a 30in table, and a carver needs its arms to clear the underside of the table frieze or it will not pull in.

Common changes: seats widened; backs raised; arms shortened to clear a particular table; a child’s chair to match an adult set; a set extended years later to match chairs we made before. See bespoke and commissioning.

Standard sizes

These are the sizes we make as standard. They are starting points rather than limits — every dimension can be altered, and most sets have at least one change. Every size we make is listed on the sizes page.

Prices

Quoted per chair, by pattern, timber, seat type and finish, with a carver priced separately from a single. Tell us the numbers, the seat and the finish and we will give you a guide price. Special timbers and finishes are priced on application. Standard designs are normally twelve weeks from order to delivery, and when the workshop is busy that can run to fifteen or sixteen. A genuine one-off usually adds around four weeks. Your date is confirmed when you order.

A chair is often one part of a larger scheme. When it is, the panelling and built-in work alongside it come from Reeve & Co Interiors, and the kitchen from Square & True — the same benches, the same hands.

Frequently asked questions

See the chairs in the shop, with prices and timbers for each.