In this issue there are varied contributions to the short notes and queries section, ranging from an appeal for help in the search for John Lombe’s Piedmont chest, thought to have been used to carry designs and models of silk-throwing equipment key to the foundation of the mill in Derby c. 1717, to the discovery of a chair that is the missing link in how Windsor chair making began in Grantham in 1800. A note on John Erhart Rose, a nineteenth-century cabinetmaker in Virginia, and a Letter from America bring news of current furniture research in the United States. Reports from the annual conference in Shropshire show the richness of furniture and buildings visited. Hans Piena from the Netherlands Open Air Museum at Arnhem gave the Christopher Gilbert Memorial Lecture, examining the history of the Dutch ladder-back chair. Full details are in the Newsletter.

left to right: thirteenth-century chair, excavated from a site near Rotterdam; a reproduction of what the original would have looked like. Collection of the Netherlands Open Air Museum, Arnhem