As fashions evolved with other domestic furniture, elements such as shaped splats and cabriole legs found their way into Windsor chairs too (fig. 4), though they remained artisan-made.
Fig. 4. Elm and Yew Gothic Windsor, circa 1760.
However, in the same echelons as eighteenth-century cabinetmakers were the chairmakers, who predominantly used walnut, mahogany and other fashionable timbers for their formal chairs. As fashions dictated, chairmakers produced Windsors in mahogany, though they were commonly clumsy looking with oversized components to compensate for mahogany’s lack of elasticity (figs. 5 & 6).