Chair of the Month for March is this bedroom chair with a caned seat, made in about 1875 and selected in recognition of International Women’s Day on 8 March. In the 1870s in the Wycombe area, caned seats were increasingly made by women as work in lace making became harder to find and paid less. Women caners worked in the factories, workshops and their own homes, fitting their work around child care, cooking and cleaning.
This chair is not currently on display. It has been recently cleaned, as part of Wycombe Museum’s Chair Store project.
Chair of the Month is a partnership between Wycombe Museum and the Regional Furniture Society.
Members may wish to note the forthcoming exhibition at the Museum of the Home:
Splats and Spindles: Six English Regional Chairs
Did you know that country chairs have their own language?
For centuries, across the different regions of England, people made chairs for everyday use based on local traditions, using timber and other materials readily available in the area. The craftmanship and design that informed regional chairmaking was passed from generation to generation, and distinct features formed unique chairmaking dialects associated with each region.
Visitors will get up close with six chairs from the Bernard and Geraldine Cotton Chair Collection and Archive, most of which have not been on display for 20 years. Each chair links to a different region, where you will learn the stories of both celebrated and lesser-known makers, discover how everyday furniture can reflect local history and gain insight into Dr Bernard and Geraldine Cotton’s work.
This display is made possible with funding from the Regional Furniture Society and The Bernard and Geraldine Cotton Fund.
The 2026 conference will be held at West Dean College, near Chichester. Accommodation will be in single and double, en-suite student accommodation. The conference package includes an evening meal on Monday 13th July, breakfast, lunch and dinner on Tuesday and Wednesday plus breakfast on Thursday. There will be a more formal dinner on Tuesday evening. All meals will be at West Dean College except on Wednesday when there will be a packed lunch. In the unlikely event of costs exceeding estimates, the Society may need to levy a surcharge of no more than £50 per person nearer the event.
The programme begins on Monday afternoon with a tour of the Mary Rose at Portsmouth Historic Dockyards and a talk by the Collections Manager focusing on furniture and wooden artifacts. On Tuesday we have a morning visit to the Weald and Downland Museum. In the afternoon at West Dean College, there will be a symposium exploring vernacular chairs made in Sussex and the origins of the Morris designs retailed as ‘Sussex’ chairs. Speakers at this event will be Janet Pennington, Guy Poulter and John Boram.
On Wednesday we will be on a coach tour for the day, visiting Standen, an Arts and Crafts House in East Grinstead with its original furnishings and collection of Morris Sussex chairs; Parham House, a fine Elizabethan house sensitively restored and furnished with an eclectic mix of furniture and an important textile collection; St Peter’s Church at Parham and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Warminghurst.
Standen from the garden
On Thursday there will be an opportunity in the morning to view the furniture conservation workshops at West Dean and the extensive grounds before the AGM and furniture surgery in the Old Library.
The booking form is here. Please return the form to RFS Events Team by email: events.rfs@gmail.com by March 15th 2026. You will be notified by March 30th if you have a place and payment will be required at that point.
Our Chair of the Month for February is this office chair with an inverted heart pierced into the back. It probably dates from around 1900 and has a venetian red mahogany style finish. It can be viewed in the chair galleries at Wycombe Museum.
Chair of the Month is a partnership between Wycombe Museum and the Regional Furniture Society.
We will start on Tuesday afternoon at Gregynog Hall near Newtown, a fine nineteenth-century mansion with an exceptional early seventeenth-century carved oak room surviving from the earlier house. This was the twentieth-century home of the Davies sisters who were early collectors of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, all now in the National Museum of Wales. Twentieth-century collections in the house are furniture by Peter Waals and Brynmawr. Gregynog is the home of the famous private press of the same name. In the early evening, we visit Cwm Weeg, Newtown, a fifteenth-century cruck farmhouse with late twentieth-century extensions and large garden including a grotto.
On Wednesday morning we meet at Brithdir Hall, Berriew, a sixteenth-century timber-framed house with later Georgian alterations and an interesting collection of early pictures and furniture. Lunch will be at the Horseshoes Inn, Berriew. In the afternoon we will have a tour of Vaynor Park, Berriew, a seventeenth-century brick-built mansion substantially embellished c.1840 by Thomas Penson. It has been home to the current owner’s family since the mid-eighteenth century and its collections include fine twentieth-century pictures. This is followed by an early evening visit to Llanerchydol Hall, near Welshpool, an early nineteenth-century neo-gothic house by one of the Reptons, containing some of the original mirrors and pier tables.
On Thursday we visit Walcot Hall, Bishops Castle, a brick mansion by William Chambers for 1st Lord Clive, with substantial twentieth-century alterations. Our final visit will be to the Judge’s Lodgings, Presteigne, with early nineteenth-century purpose-built court rooms and cells by Edward Haycock and original furnishings.
A two-course lunch on Wednesday and Thursday, a two-course supper on Wednesday and tea and cake on all three days is included.
Numbers will be limited to 30
Cost: £225
Please complete the Booking Form and send to RFS Events Team at events.rfs@gmail.com by 27 March 2026. You will be sent payment details in the following week.
The visit will start at 10:00, with a welcome and coffee at the Wycombe Museum. We will have a talk by curator Catherine Grigg on chair making in the area followed by an update on the chair conservation work and development of the new store, the Chair Discovery Centre. This is a major project to which the RFS has contributed grant funding. There will then be time for a self-led visit round the galleries before lunch of sandwiches and cake.
In the afternoon we will walk to the Chair Discovery Centre, a 5-minute walk down the hill.
The visit will finish at 4:00pm.
For members arriving by train, the museum is a few minutes’ walk from the station. There is limited on-site parking at the museum, with disabled parking available. Metered road-side parking and car parks are available within a five-minute walk.
Numbers will be limited to 20
Cost: £40.00
Please complete the Booking Form and send to RFS Events Team at events.rfs@gmail.com by 26 February. You will be sent payment details in the following week.
Museum location and contact:
Wycombe Museum Priory Avenue High Wycombe HP13 6PX
January’s Chair of the Month is this Art Nouveau-style carved armchair with a pink velvet-covered upholstered seat.
It was made by John R Clarke of High Wycombe in about 1905, and carved by his brother-in law Edmund Hutchinson. At the time this chair was made, several Wycombe makers were experimenting with fashionable styles like this, as well as continuing to make traditional Wycombe chairs like Windsors.
This chair is part of the latest batch recently added to our online chair database. See more at the link below!
December make us think of being cosy and comfortable at home beside the fire, and this month’s chair of the month would be perfect for that!
These chairs were first made by G-Plan in about 1965 and the company named them ‘The World’s Most Comfortable Chair’. Made between 1965 and 1980, they have featured in James Bond films as the villain’s chair.
This particular chair was used by a family in Hounslow, and still has the green velour cover that the family used to protect it.
November’s Chair of the Month is a trouser press chair.
Made in London in the 1920s by VC Bond and Sons, it was given the name Vee Cee Bee, after the company name. Like bedroom chairs made in High Wycombe it has a caned seat. It also has a press in the back, used to take the creases out of trousers.
Members may be interested in the following event at The National Museum of Scotland:
Join us for a special film screening and panel discussion to hear about the Ash Rise project. Learn more about Scotland’s native ash tree, the challenges of ash die-back and how the material is celebrated in contemporary furniture making.
Inspired by the ongoing touring exhibition Ash Rise, presented by the Scottish Furniture Makers Association, the documentary film of the same name tells the story of this beautiful tree, its historic and contemporary brilliance as a material and the challenges of ash die-back.
The film screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring the film’s creative director, Tom Addy, alongside contemporary furniture maker, Helena Robson, and the Chief Forester for Scotland, Dr Helen McKay. The discussion will be chaired by Stephen Jackson, Senior Curator of Furniture and Woodwork.
This auditorium event will be followed by an opportunity to meet the makers and see examples of ash woodwork and furniture up close in the Events Space on Level 2, from 15:30–16:30. The Events Space will also be open to visitors from 13:00 until the event begins at 14:00.
Regional Furniture Society 
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