Overall height:       47" Seat Height:         17 1/2" Seat Width:          20" Seat Depth:          17 " Height at Arm:      27 1/4" Price: $475.00  (return to home page)

This variety is more eagerly sought than any other, because it combines many lines of beauty and by the fireside it speaks much of "old forgotten far off things".  We may be sure that its great height of back was used to drape a shawl to serve as a protection against draught, and that it succeeded the clumsy settle, which was difficult to move, and always in the way.  The literature of the home will not be complete until a proper tale is written centering around a comb back chair, It is shaped by steaming and clamping to a form to give it the proper concavity, and the more the better.  After it has become set, it is finished and adjusted to its place on the spindles.  But, it appears that some old combs did not get or keep the proper curvature.  Nothing adds so much to a chair for so little trouble as a finely curved, delicately scrolled back.

    The upper edge should be thinned almost to a knife edge.  No wood is left in a Windsor except where strength requires it. The comb is otherwise called the top rail, to distinguish it from the lower or arm rail.  It's thickness, where the spindles enter it, is often not more than a half inch.  It was, therefore, a delicate piece of joinery to bore the holes for the spindles.  It is clear why the toughest woods like hickory were used for the rail.