Here’s a surprise! A miniature chair that has been passed down a branch of the Clissett family, and is reputed to have been made by Philip himself. It is only 10¾ inches high and about 6 inches across the front legs. While the chair is not marked with Clissett’s initials, almost all of the features of this little chair are known from one or other full-sized chair that he is known to have made. More on this below.
The chair belongs to a descendent of John Hubert Clissett, one of the two grandsons who worked with Philip in the early 20th century, and who carried on the workshop briefly after his death. The chair has been passed down the family as having been made by Philip himself. Many thanks to Anna Lawrie for getting in touch and for supplying some great photographs of her chair.

The chair is built like a fairly standard West Midlands chair, but has no pegs in any of the joints (we’ve seen this in other small chairs by Clissett). Some obvious Clissett features include the finials, which are more or less those used on the classic ladderback, and the rush seat with the typical Clissett method of weaving the front edge. We can even find the typical Clissett scribe marks marking the insertion points for stretchers.

The chair is unusual in being essentially a ladderback, but with dowels rather than slats. Cross rails like these, with central ring turnings are unknown in Clissett’s chairs, other than from the two flap-seated chairs in the Hereford Museum. The arms are similarly unusual on a Clissett-made chair, with the only other example discovered so far on one of the three known high chairs. The front arm supports are the lower three-quarters of the turning commonly used by Clissett on his spindleback armchairs. The pattern of the fancy turned front stretcher is known from a couple of Clissett’s side chairs, and from two by his brother-in-law, William Cole. The only features of this chair that are not known from other chairs are the front feet, and the stretcher pattern. Single rather than double stretchers is an obvious compromise on such a small chair, and single front stretchers (both patterned and plain dowel) are found on a number of Clissett’s full-sized chairs. Note that the rear stretcher is missing from this chair.

Miniature items of furniture like this are often described as apprentice pieces. I’ve also heard it suggested that they are demonstration pieces, and this chair certainly shows off a range of Clissett features. But it seems equally possible that it was made for children or grandchildren to play with. Whatever the case, it’s wonderful that it has survived, and that it’s retention in the family provides such good provenance.

Recently, there seems to have been a flurry of William Cole armchairs coming to my attention. This is very strange as, until 2015, I’d not seen any (though one was lurking in the Museum of the Home). They are very similar to Philip Clissett’s armchairs except for three obvious features. The most consistent one is the arm support turning, which is much more bulbous at the top than Clissett’s. On three of the four known chairs, the arms are unlike Philip Clissett’s spindleback chair, being broad and flat very similar to those on Clissett’s later ladderbacks. Also different, but rather variable, is the placing of one of the crossbars in the back, being placed very close to the arm insertions in the back legs. All of these are high-backed armchairs. Clissett also made a low-back armchair in this style – no 6 on the spindleback chair page. But, so far, we haven’t seen one of these from his brother-in-law.

Now, Gary Glover has contacted me with photographs of his two William Cole armchairs! And one of them is a low-back (see photo above). Gary’s chairs look as though they were made to go together, and both have the broad arms described above.

I’m very grateful to Gary for the information about his chairs. While it seems almost inevitable that other Cole armchairs will emerge, there’s little doubt that his low-back chair is extremely rare. The pairing of the high-back with the low-back is possibly unique, and I hope they can continue to stay together.

Just to reiterate the chairmaker relationships. William Cole lived in Bosbury, Herefordshire, close to Philip Clissett, and his sister was married to Clissett. Cole himself was married to the daughter of John Warrender, another chairmaker who was Philip Clissett’s uncle by marriage.

I recently wrote about how I knew of only two William Cole armchairs, one in a museum, and the other in private hands. Now, within a few days of each other, two more have turned up, both clearly marked with Cole's WC stamp on the tops of the back legs. (William Cole was Philip Clissett's brother-in-law. He lived and worked as a chairmaker in Bosbury, close to Philip, but had a much shorter career.)

The first  of these new chairs was brought to my attention by Rob Derrick, a dealer from Hay-on-Wye. Illustrated here, it is more or less identical to the two previously known chairs, having four spindles and the typically West Midlands timber seat. It's clearly marked with the initials WC in the usual places, on the tops of the back legs. Many thanks to Rob for contacting me about this, and for allowing the use of his photographs.

The second new chair appeared on the website of another dealer, and was brought to my attention by Oli Barling who saw it on Instagram (Thanks Oli). This chair is similar to the others in all respects other than having a woven seat. This would originally have been rush, but has been replaced by seagrass. I've asked for permission to use photographs of this chair, but it hasn't been granted, as yet - you can view it here as long as it remains up for sale.

I'm sure there are other William Cole armchairs out there, aside from these four. If you do know of any, please get in touch, and help take the research forward.

Came across this book recently, and was amused to see that Philip Clissett had gained an entry. It doesn't reveal his status, either as a saint or a sinner.* Other than that, this is a simple, short account of the chairmaker, with no indication of where the information was obtained from.

It's a great shame that the illustration of a chair that accompanies the account is not actually one of Philip's designs. It is, in fact, a design by Ernest Gimson. Details, details!

* Of course, there was an article published in The Countryman magazine in 1987 that was titled "The Saintly Philip Clissett". Perhaps the author of this book intended to reference that, but somehow forgot!

Until very recently, I was only aware of a single armchair by William Cole, Philip Clissett's brother-in-law and fellow chairmaker in the village of Bosbury. But it seems that, all along, there was a similar chair in the Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum) in London.

The chair seems identical to the previously known one in all respects. While, at first sight, it appears identical to Philip Clissett's work, it differs in the form of the top part of the arm supports, and in the positions of the cross dowels in the lower part of the back - minor differences that show how closely these two chairmakers work is related. Of course, there is also the WC stamp to the top of the back legs, contrasting with Clissett's PC stamp.

WC-stamped chairs by William Cole are very rare, so I'd be pleased to hear about any of his chairs. Contact me here.

John Warrender (or Warander) was Philip Clissett's uncle, and made very similar chairs to Philip. He died in 1845, early in Philip's career, and there are relatively few of his chairs remaining. Like Philip's chairs, John's are stamped with his initials, IW.

Now, I can't really claim that the chair in the illustration is "new". It's news to me, but has been sitting in the Geffrye Museum (now known as The Museum of the Home) since 2005, and was part of Bill Cotton's collection. I simply didn't know it was there until today, when I was checking the museum collection online - a fairly new facility. In fact I found another relevant chair as well, but more about that later.

The chair is a standard Warrender side chair, apart from one feature - the front stretcher. Normally, chairs by Warrender have the double plain dowel front stretcher that we also commonly see in chairs by his nephew, Clissett, and his son-in-law William Cole. I know of just one example of a Clissett chair with a similar single pattern-turned stretcher, and a couple by Cole - all are the same, and of the same general form as this one by Warrender.

In fact, there are three identical Warrender chairs at the Geffrye. I shall try to see them if I'm ever in London again...

These photographs (below), of Barnard's Inn Hall in London, were taken on 12 November 1892, and are the earliest known photograph of Philip Clissett's chairs.  I wrote about this image (and a second one that shows the same chairs plus a high back armchair) in a previous post. At that time, I couldn't show the photographs because of a copyright issue. Now, Historic England has allowed me to display them, for which I am very grateful.

These chairs are undoubtedly some of those that were bought from Clissett by the Art Workers Guild, and organisation that used the Hall for it's meetings. They bought many more chairs over the next twenty years or so, and they are still in regular use in the Guild's current meeting room.

It's interesting that two of the chairs are unusual in having bulbous underarm turnings, rather than the usual tapered design. The Guild has quite a few chairs in this unusual design, but they are rarely seen elsewhere. That they are amongst the Guild's earliest purchases (they started buying them in 1888) suggests that they may have been part of James MacLaren's original design.

Here is another typically West Midlands chair. Along with the chair described in my last post, it is of a type seen in Edward Thompson Davis’s mid-19th century painting For What We Are About To Receive, featured in Bill Cotton’s book The English Regional Chair.

This “short-arm” style of chair has been extensively explored in a article by John Boram. With close links to French chairs, this type is found in several English regional styles, including Macclesfield, Sussex and Worcestershire. Indeed, Cotton illustrated a Worcestershire example, by Kerry of Evesham, and suggested it could be the inspiration for the design of the Clissett-MacLaren ladderback, something which is now very much in doubt. In his article, John Boram shows a spindleback example that he attributes to Philip Clissett, though the chair is not stamped “PC” and there are a number of elements that suggest to me that it is not by Clissett. What is clear from John’s article is that this short-arm style can be confidently linked to Worcestershire, and that the appearance of one of these in Davis’s painting does support the idea that they were, for a time, typical of the region.

Our chair is a nice example in cherrywood, and of very light construction, as these typically are. It is pegged at the usual places for a West Midlands chair. In addition, there are a number of pegs at the ends of the stretchers – these may be later additions attempting to stabilise loose joints. The seat is large and low, about 15 inches in height. Maximum height of the chair is about 40 inches. The seat edge protectors may not be original. The arms have a unusual dipped form. Aside from these features, there are a few other points of particular interest.

The arm supports, which pierce the side seat rails, are morticed into the otherwise unmodified upper side stretchers, and held in place with pegs. Often, on this type of chair, the stretcher is enlarged at the point where the arm support enters but, in this case, the stretcher is plain. This does make a link with John Boram’s attributed Clissett short-arm chair, which is built in the same way.

The arm supports are of interest because, like the other West Midlands chair recently discussed, they feature the taper and ball (half-ball) style that is an important aspect of the famous Clissett ladderback. Taken with other evidence, we are beginning to see that this was a feature that Clissett would have at least been aware of, and may well have used long before James MacLaren came along to influence the form of the ladderback.

The slats of the ladder back are very reminiscent of the Clissett ladderback, and similar to those seen on the Kerry chair referred to above. In fact, I’ve seen quite a few West Midlands short-arm chairs with this type of ladder back. Again, they show similarities to French chairs. What particularly interests me are the differences between these chairs and Clissett’s. Clissett’s chairs in the well-known Maclaren or Art Workers Guild style always have the slats shaped from the front, so that you can usually see the curved face running off to the top of each slat. The back of each slat is entirely flat. In contrast, in the chair we are discussing here, the shaping is at the front for the centre part of the slat, and at the back for the side parts.

This shaping at the back of the slat, rather than the front, seems to be common to all the West Midlands short-arm chairs I’ve seen with this style of ladder back. It is also the case in the only two full-arm chairs I know of with this type of ladder back, one of which is uncannily similar to a Clissett ladderback (but clearly isn’t one of his).

But what is really interesting (to me, at least), is that I know of two chairs made by Clissett where the slats are shaped from the back rather than the front. Both are atypical in other ways…

The first is stamped with Clissett’s initials, and is the only known ladderback with a timber seat. It is identical to Clissett’s stamped spindleback chairs in all respects aside from the back.

The second chair looks, at first sight, like a standard Clissett ladderback. but is slightly smaller (see below). We know it’s made by Clissett because it’s a handed-down family piece – and it has the usual workshop scribe marks. But the slats are quite different to the standard ladderback – the centre part is much wider than usual, and the sides are shaped from behind.

My feeling is that these two Clissett-made chairs both pre-date James MacLaren’s visit to Philip’s workshop. The way the slats are made reflects the general way slats were finished in Worcestershire (remember, Clissett was born, and learned his trade, in Worcestershire). So MacLaren’s principal contribution may well have been to influence the way the slats were shaped, resulting in a more elegant back to the chair. All the other elements of this iconic chair seem to have been in place already.

This chair is NOT by Philip Clissett, but I have a few reasons for discussing it here.

Firstly, it’s an armchair version of one of the chairs featured in the painting by Edward Thompson Davis that I discussed in a previous post. It’s likely to have been a common style of chair in the Worcestershire area in the mid-19th century. It was purchased by me from a private seller in Brierley Hill in the West Midlands.

Secondly, there’s a clear link to Clissett’s famous ladderback chair in that this chair has a similar taper and ball arm support (see below). Bill Cotton’s The English Regional Chair contains no clear examples of this particular pattern of support other than Clissett’s chair. A couple of Lincolnshire examples come close (NE196-197), but they lack the ball turning (well, half-ball, in reality). On Clissett’s chair, the underarm support looks at one with the overall Arts and Crafts look of the chair, and might be attributed to the influence of James MacLaren who commissioned the first of these, and made some design input. But the existence of a similar support on a this rather different West Midlands chair proves that it was in use as a local motif long before MacLaren arrived on the scene – there are other chairs that support this point, and I’ll post on them before long.

Thirdly, it’s an example of the sort of local chair that Philip Clissett must have been aware of, and that his own work must have stood alongside.

A more detailed description of this chair would not be amiss. It’s made entirely in ash and, unusually for a West Midlands chair, is pegged only at the rear of the top slat. There are the usual signs that it was made in cleft green wood, so that it would have been held together entirely by the shrinkage of the mortices around the tenons. That this has failed in the case of one of the arm supports is evidence by a large, old, iron nail having been driven into the edge of one of the through tenons.

The chair is quite heavily constructed with legs of about 1½ inches in diameter, tapering to 1¼ inches at the top. Aside from the tapered arm support, the stand out features are the sinuous arms – they are really beautifully shaped (see below). There are vestiges of green paint in places – I haven’t got a clue whether that is original.

Overall height is about 40 inches, about 5 inches shorter than Clissett’s tall chairs. Seat height is 15 inches, about 2 inches lower than Clissett’s adult chairs – low chairs like this seem quite common. But it’s quite a wide chair – the seat measures 21⅜ inches at the front. With the sinuous arms, it will accommodate a substantial person.

There’s a lot of wear to this chair. The top left finial is part worn away. The arm ends are well worn, particularly to the right where much is missing. The lower front rung is well worn, a good indicator of age. But the best indicator of substantial use is the amount of wear to the inside of the arm supports which has completely removed the ring turning at the bottom.

No indication of maker, I'm afraid, which is a pity but pretty standard for chairs from this area.