Claremont fan-back Windsors take their name from a set of chairs made, circa 1773, for Lord Clive of India during his rebuilding of Claremont in Surrey[1] (fig. 1).
Fig. 1. One of Lord Clive’s extant fan-back chairs, c.1773.
This style of chair is one of the earliest forms of Windsors, owing its origins to the basic back stool (figs. 2 & 3) which in turn evolved from the humble cracket, or three-legged stool.
Fig. 2. Primitive ash back stool.
Fig. 3. Ash, elm and walnut back stool with ‘axe-haft’ legs. Supplied to the Bodleian Library, Oxford in 1776 and described in Jackson’s Oxford Journal as “admirably calculated for ornament and repose”. (Bodleian Library)
As with back stools, fan-backs’ back sticks sprout from a relatively narrow base. Later evolved Windsor chair backs emanate from a much broader arc which affords immense strength to the superstructure.
The fan-back acquires its strength quite simply from two or more bracing sticks which rise from the bob-tail – an extension at the rear of the seat – and converge with the back sticks at the crest rail (figs 1, 3 & 4).
Fig. 4. Claremont Windsor chair, showing the bob-tail and bracing sticks, c.1760. (Martin Murray)
The Claremont Windsor bears more than a close resemblance to another iconic Windsor, the Goldsmith chair (fig. 5), sharing the same bob-tail, bracing sticks and leg turnings (known as ‘hoofed feet’ or ‘Goldsmith’ legs).
Fig. 5. Oliver Goldsmith’s Windsor chair, c.1770. V & A
The six chairs I will be making will be based on the very early example in fig. 6 which has, unfortunately, been deprived of its hooves (mine shall be resplendent with a full compliment of feet!). The seat is boldly shaped and its bi-lobed bob-tail and broad lively crest rail give it great character. The leg turnings too, are bold and commensurate with the vasiform legs of other chairs and tables of the second quarter of the eighteenth-century.
Fig. 6. Early ash and elm Claremont chair (the legs, reduced), c.1730. (Christie’s)
Jack Plane
[1] Thomas Crispin, The English Windsor Chair, Alan Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1992, p.12.
looking forward to this one
Are you able to obtain Elm in wide enough dimensions, these days?
Elms have almost all gone here and seat-width blanks are getting very scarce.
There’s the possibility of joining boards, but Elm (in the UK, at least) was plentiful in full-width billets until recentl deades.
If you can’t get Elm what would you consider an authentic alternative?
Australia possesses the largest number of disease free elms in the world. I have cut elm up to 43″ (1100mm) wide and there are larger trees around than that too.
I have made a number of Windsors in the past few years with large seats that required elm up to 24″ (600mm) wide… here , here and here.
In Britain, elm was the sole timber employed by traditional chairmakers (apart from the all-mahogany Windsor chairs that were made by cabinetmakers), so there isn’t really an historic alternative to elm.
The North Americans, despite having plentiful elms, chose pine and poplar for their seats which you may consider as alternatives. North American Windsor seats are frequently joined, so again, that could be a consideration if you wanted to make a trans-Atlantic style chair.
JP