Amongst the wide range of occasional chairs available today the wingback chair has probably the most enduring pedigree. Few people browsing for furniture for their home today realise the wing chair includes a history spanning hundreds of years.
The wingback chair is really a chair, that is usually fully upholstered, with wings rising up from the arm and joining the rear at a 90-degree or wider angle. The original purpose for that wings were assumed to become to prevent drafts in old houses from reaching the upper body in order to protect the delicate skin of gentrified ladies from the heat of a roaring fire in the hearth.
As one of the oldest and most popular forms of furniture, the wing chair, also called a fireside chair or perhaps an easy chair, is definitely identified by its pair of protruding wings, its considerable depth, its dramatic presence, and it is upholstered framework. The first wing chair appeared in the late 1600s, but it was not until after 1720 that it is popularity became widespread.
Wing chairs are occasionally called fireside chairs, and for good reason. Their design is perfect for experiencing the warmth of the fire while your back and sides are protected from chilly draughts.
However these chairs aren’t the first pieces furniture to make use of this method to keeping comfortably warm. Wings were also utilized on a few of the high-backed wooden settles present in English manor houses and pubs/inns. These settles were bare wooden benches but sometimes long cushions were added for comfort, well before the brand new type of upholstered chair brought an extra level of comfort towards the late 17th century.
The same chairs soon appeared in colonial America. Like other Queen Anne furniture from the early 1700s, they frequently had cabriole legs and curving lines distinguishing them from earlier styles.The famous cabinet-makers from the age, like Chippendale in London, designed elegant frames to set from the upholstery. If you prefer a true antique, keep in mind that “Queen Anne style” is just that: a style and never a guarantee that the chair is 300 years old.
Fabrics used weren’t necessarily subdued or subtle. Bright patterns were observed in both colonial and Georgian drawing rooms. Restorers of 18th century antiques often prefer plain coloured fabrics, but this isn’t essential for authenticity. Leather upholstery is another valid option.
If you look at antique French wing chairs, or newer chairs echoing the Louis XIV or Louis XV period, you might well see a lower seat in the bergre style. Similarly, in 1700s England Hepplewhite tried lowering the seat in the designs. He called the wings saddle-cheeks, perhaps knowing that these were called cheeks, not wings, in France. Ears is the other name, utilized in certain parts of Europe, and remembered in the old-fashioned British name lug-chair. (Lugs is slang for ears.)
American wing chairs, also called easy chairs, were often considered bedroom furniture ideal for anyone frail or tired, sitting quietly in their room. Both antique and modern wing chairs may be related to elderly people; a higher seat and back with built-in draught-proofing present an appropriate type of comfort, and remind us that another name for this piece of furniture is grandfather chair.
In great britan, wing chairs remained in the parlour or living room. Writers within the Victorian times describing idealised scenes of family life round a blazing hearth often mentioned a fireside chair. 1800s chairs were often more generously padded than earlier wingbacks, often filled with a very firm horsehair stuffing.
Contemporary designers now produce a variety of shapes and sizes of wing chair, and yet the first Queen Anne shape has an enduring popularity.Although the functional demand for wing declined as homes moved away from open fires to heating, the design motif remained steadfastly popular. And not just in traditional furniture designs. Even with modernist furniture design in the 1950s and 1960s new chair designs using new materials (e.g. designs by Grant Featherstone 1951, Edward Wormley designing for Dunbar within the 1950s ‘The Egg’ by Arne Jacobsen for Fritz Hansen, Denmark, 1958) either retained or re-invented the wing.