Custom hand-made chairs and Windsor chairs

Owning a hand-built, custom made chair is rare pleasure in this day and age. Chair making requires a host of skills many furniture makers forgo, and crafting a Windsor chair requires the mastery of an additional set of skills.

A Windsor is different from conventional chairs in the following ways:

• The arms, backs, and rear spindles are hand riven from a large log before being dimensioned and shaped by hand, endowing them with both delicacy and strength.
• The legs join the seat using tapered joinery, meaning that the joints are tightened with use, not loosened.
• The seat is hand-hewn into an extremely comfortable saddle or dish shape, cradling the user. The height of the legs can be adjusted to meet your individual needs.

The wood for each part of the chair is selected based on its particular structural properties, meaning that each Windsor chair is commonly made from as many as three different species. For this reason, they traditionally receive an opaque or painted finish.

I’m a graduate of Michael Dunbar’s Windsor Institute in New Hampshire, the Dean of Windsor Chairmakers, as Yankee Magazine called him.

If you’re looking for a strong, beautiful chair that will last a lifetime of daily use, browse our catalogue of hand-made Windsor chair styles.