Walnut was in abundant use for chair througout the first half of the XVIIIth century, but when mahogany took the lead from 1720s onwards, early Georgians found a new pleasure in carved detail such as the lion mask of the 1720s and 30s. By the end of the reign of Georges I and far more by 1740s splat back mahogany chair were to show square shouldered outline, which was the next major phase and produced what one regards as the finest chairs ever made. Here the cresting rode over the tops of the slightly outwards-curving side vertical, typicaly ending in paper scrolls or similar near detail, while the splap gained much in ornemental value by intricate piercing.

Canvas work continued to make a major contribution to furnishings during the first half of the XVIIIth century. The embroiderers employed the same materials as in the earlier period: Canvas remained the basic one.
The English delight in isolated floral motifs during the early XVIIIth century. The dense leaf and tree patterns were appropriate for covering and cushion. Densely-packed floral surrounds is often used to frame the pictorial centres of seat furniture. The pictorial centres is based on engraved sources and include classical, pastoral and genres scenes. During this period English canvas work is also influenced by the designs of woven tapestries, particularly in professional work. This close link with woven tapestries shall continue throughout the XIIIth century.

The terme Chippendale style indicates a school rather than a man. The Director is an expensive folio book of 160 plates published in 1754 in the form of a pre-paid subscription with the help of sponsors as the Duke of Beaufort, the Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Feversham, the Duke of Hamilton, the Duke of Norfolk, among others, and the Earl of Northumberland to who the book is dedicated.
We only know the Chippendale style from the designs in the Director not from the work of Thomas Chippendale himself. That style includes not only the work of his contemporaries but much which was made before the time of the first edition of The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director
In it we find lot of designs derived from French rocaille (rococo), English version of chinoiserie and Gothic (The Chinese trend was the rage of the early 1760s and was occasonally blended with rococo.) So the seat of the Chippendale style can be divided into four classes : The cabriole (merged into the French taste), the straigth-leg and fretted, the chinese and the Gothic.
The Chippendale cabriole develops directly from the early mahogany years retaining the ball-and-claw but in a depraved maner. The scrolled or leaf-carved finish is the most usual, known at this time as the French foot.
The square-section leg (the section is more often triangular) belongs also to the Chippendale School, and is almost confined to it. We know that style of leg as Marlborough leg.
The rage for the Chinese taste was general and every designer pandered to it, not only in England but also in France. This fashion, appearing in late Stuart period, has probably been expanded by Sir William Chambers, who, published in 1757 Designs for Chinese Buildings and his precursor Mathias Darly with his Chinese, Gothic and Modern chairs published in 1752.
The Gothic vogue lasted just about ten years and was not as strong as were the French rococo and English chinoiserie. In circa 1760s, any piercing in the form of a pointed arch was hailed as Gothic

Needleworks is by nature elaborate and textured and therefore usually looks best on chairs of a simple line. Chippendale in his book recommended tapestry coverings or other sort of Needleworks for chair in the French style. Shops in London sold kits for milady to work, with the patern drawn on the canvas and the wools with which to work it included. Classical scenes continued to be a favorite design. Chair coverings of plainer forms, and in limited range of colours were also made. These sometimes imitated or echoed damask with bold formal leaf patterns in green, blue or red.
Nevertheless, though that the standard achieved by the amateur embroiderers throughout the last period was high, by the middle of the XVIIIth century they had confined themselves to heavy canvas work leaving to the professionals the high quality furnishing embroideries.

In 1738 word of new excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii reached the world. Whole room buried for centuries fascinated everyone, but it was not before 1760 that these discoveries affected the world of decoration.
The drawings of Giambattista Piranesi published circa 1756 in Italia and in which he reproduced monument, ornemental motifs, vases etc. were undoubtly a great source of inspiration for a young man of 26 years old. Indeed it is in 1754 that Robert Adam commenced his Grand tour and did not return to England until 1758. He was there in Italy sketching and studying the works of ancient architecture. The result, in part, was a large folio volume with engravings by Bartolozzi and Piranesi himself, published in 1758.
Had the Adam style not existed the Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer's Guide of Hepplewhite would have been a very different production to what it is.
The symbols of ancient times were absorbed into the decorators' s catalogs and combined with symbols of the present. Indeed if we examine the Neo-Classical Adam style there is manifested a notable influence from outside.
Adam chair were of painted or gilded soft wood with oval or rounded tapestry-mounted back, padded arm horizontals and tapering, fluted legs.
Dress fashion contributed to the shape: with stiffened coats and hooped skirts becoming outmoded during the 1760s, seats could be smaller and the arms brought forward over the front legs once more. The characteristic back outlines were the oval or rounded elipse; the nearly square escutcheon and the shield. Favorite decorations included delicate swags of flower, tripod urns, lunettes with radiating rays or fan and the lyre.

Hepplewhite illustrated the current linking for these simple and increasingly light styles appropriate to prevailing dress fashions. One part of his work shows the influence of Robert Adam which may be conveniently designated as Adam-Hepplewhite.
George Hepplewhite died in 1786 and the first edition of the Guide has been issued in 1788 by the firm of A. Hepplewhite & Co. (the initial being that of the widow Alice an alteration of Aleas).
To the school of Hepplewhite belongs models borrowed from French Louis XV (curved or cabriole Hepplewhite) and Louis XVI (turned-leg Hepplewhite), at last the Taper-leg Hepplewhite which is merely the most original and representative of the work of this school. We must notice too, in the case of chairs, some distinctive characteristiques as the serpentine top-rail, the hoop-back (an almost revival of the earlier Queen Anne) and the shield-back in its various forms.
One hardly ever meets with a badly designed Hepplewhite chair. Hepplewhite school had a fine tradition behind it. Proportions and details were almost instintive. In the preface of the Guide the essence of Hepplewhite's style was stated as to combine elegance and utility.

The prefered upholstery materials for Adam-Hepplewhite were still tapestry or needlework but more yet figured silks and satins. Cushion continued to provide scope for needlework particularly for caned chair. Nevertheless Neo-classical embroidered coverings are relatively scarce. Simpler design in the style of the textile designer were increasingly preferred from about 1770. Combining silk weaving and embroidery they were often worked with tambour embroidery.

The revised edition of the Hepplewhite's Guide in 1791 included paterns for square-backed chairs which had been on the market for at least eight years before Sheraton in his The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book gave impetus to such designs in 1791.
Late in XVIIIth and early XIXth century design reflected the archaeologist's wish to reproduce the actual furniture of the ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians. Thomas Hope, in 1807, rejoiced that the French Revolution had restored the pure taste of the antique reproduction of ancient Greek forms for chairs, etc.. Sheraton, in his cabinet dictionary, in 1803, showed something of the change in taste with the return to curves in scroll back and scimitar legs, in curricle and X-framed chairs, with such ornemental motifs as chimera, lion's mask and paw, eagle and dolphin.
While the styles of Sheraton and Hepplewhite overlap, inevitably, judging only by the standard of the guide and the Dawing Book; it must be conceded that Sheraton was certainly the most original of the two. He borrows from the French, in the same way as Hepplewhite does, but from the last phase of the Louis XVI only, and he gives an unmistakable English character to his adaptations of French models.

English and French canvas work was often virtually indistinguishable. Naturalistic fashion in the silk weaving industry were introduced at Lyon from about 1730 and in turn especially free designs were woven at Spitalfields in London.
Sheraton's chairs used extansively that brigth covering. He mentioned also in his Dictionary that bed-steps migth be stuffed with hair and covered with some sort of needlework. Following this taste canvas work tends to imatate woven silk using profusly silk as thread and antique symbols and light patterns. Needlewomen therefore turned their attention to appropriate designs and did attempt to stitch them in keeping with the antiquarian mood of the times.
We must notice that it is during the Sheraton period that starts a new trend in needle work : A. Philipson publishes in 1803 a pattern book in Berlin where the patterns is painted on paper. An other Berliner engraver, Frau Wittich, soon led the market in printed patterns which shall be the main feature of a fad called Berlin work during XIXth century for all Europe an America.

The Regency style cover a longer period than the one covering the delegated power to the Prince of Walles.
The typical chairs of the Regency period are immediatly recognisable with their shoulder-high square backs, deaped seats and curving scimitar legs. We find too fashion of the late XVIth and late XVIIth century changes in chair design. In main stream the crest rail several inches deep was widened to ride over the uprights instead of being housed between them. Splat begins to be simple horizontal cross rail or diagonal latice and ornament is concentrated on the cresting.
Regency style include structural backward curve of the lower back immediately above the seat rail necessiting then the curving back leg. Front legs are either straight with sometimes a cluster column or most often a variety of Greek leg small at the top, very broad at knee height and tapered.
The classic Greek chair from Roman model is the Regency favourite which continued in post-Regency years. In some late Regency the splat was in the shape of a lyre and the tapering front legs ended in heavy metal paw feet.
Georges IV choice of styles changed from the time he was Prince Regent until he reached the throne. Furniture from these two periods is a blend of styles, and eclectic period. The purchasse of the Parthenon marbles by Lord Elgin created more interest in Greek styles. One used still Egyptian ornamentation on furniture but there was a reccurent interest in things Chinese and revived Gothic style.
For lighter and delicate furniture, the woods used were mahogany, rosewood and satinwood. Nevertheless furniture of this period seems either too light or not enough.

As in Sheraton style needlework with silk thread was still profusly used for chairs covering. The Early XIXth century's liking for pale tones in plain material soon gave place to bright colours. The beginning of the Berlin craze and magazine disseminated designs to a larger segment of the public. Nineteenth and early century patterned needle work was until then the almost only choice for embroidery. Pattern book revolutionizes the market giving a cheap and larger choice of patterns and ornaments. The distinguishable difference between both was that the later were printed on checkered paper with different symbol in the outline of each colours. To the needleworker each square represented a stich. We can said that this was the first ancestor, in hand weaved tapestry field, of the Jean Lurçat method and, in needlework world, the source of the learning process found in the rage of the counted stitch during the last quater of the XXth century. To the Regency period these book showed patters of garlands, bouquets, arabesques, vases and various Greek, Roman and Egyptian ornaments. So needless to say that we will found many of these on back and seat of chair and armchair as well than cushion for the canned ones, settees and the like.

The industrial revolution, particularely in weaving labour, introducing the Jacquard loom (1801), realeased women from manufacture at home and thus gave them more time for embroidery. Around 1820s a woven open canvas was developed in France just followed in German. Squarred canvas made it possible so to reproduce patterns printed on squared paper in quickly worked cross-stitch. By 1840 fifteen thousand patern designs was available for English needlewomen, mainly taken from French and English print. By there some patterns were being printed by lithography directly upon canvas. Magazine started printing patterns about 1860s. The popularity of Berlin patterns created an offer of a larger color range availlable thanks to new chimical aniline purple pigments (1856). Since the nineteenth century was such a period of revivals, there is little point in listing fashion and motifs. Just here some of what it were which is a very few of the whole.
Some technique was revisited as appliqué which consisted to stitche a pattern and then sew to dark colored broadcloth. A more complicated technique was to baste canvas over broadcloth with a fine lining material under that, then work the pattern trough the tree layers. When work was finished, the canvas threads was pulled out one by one leaving only the pattern sitting up on the grounds. Nevertheless Berlin work dominated the field; pillows, seat covering, footstool covers and upholstery for settees and sofas were covered, though sometimes by above technique, mainly in Berlin work. The work was undemanding technically and it was done with strong materials. Much has survived. The stitches used for Berlin work were firstly tent stich (half cross-stitch) secondly cross-stitch.
In The Illuminated Book of Needlework published in 1847, Mrs Henry Owen started with the words: Embroidery, or as it is more often called Berlin wool-work. .. Berlin type patterns added to the richness that the Victorians sought. Profusions of huge naturalistic flowers dominated the mid-century. After 1850s the design and work might not have anything to do with the style of the chair. Element like stripes might be combined with every kind of pattern; dark colours mixed or surounded with silk to brighten the effect. Border patterns of foliage and flowers were quite popular and rather pretty. Glass beads from France added lustre, and were sometimes used extensively in mixed or single colours for stool top. Bright colours and complex designs contributed to a density of atmosphere and the best of it is impressive. An unusual work of the late period was applying a strip of needlework up the seat and back of a tufted chair.