furniture
Choosing the Perfect Oak Dining Chair
The are literally thousands of different dining chair designs available in a wide range of sizes, wood types and finishes depending on what your requirements are. Oak dining chairs are now very popular and and taking over from the popularity of darker chairs that were popular in the past. Oak is a very hardwearing material and its strength means that it should last a long time unlike other woods such as pine which can be weak and can break more easily.
Oak chairs can be divided again into full leather designs with the classic rollback design in either a dark brown or black leather. Some people still buy red or cream coloured leather chairs to suit their specific tastes. Another popular design is the oak chair with a slatted back and a leather or fabric pad. These designs show of the oak better than the leather chairs which only leave the legs to show of the beauty of the natural oak. Slatted back chair designs such as the Winchester have been a constant bestseller in the UK for years with many similar variations now being available.
The ladder back design of chair has come back into fashion more lately and is well suited to the traditional farmhouse or barn conversion style home where the kitchen table is often a prominent part of family life and many activities are based around this important kitchen table. The Charlton design has been a classic ladder back design for many UK retailers with its chunky ladder back type frame.
When You Purchase an Antique Oak Chair, Make Sure it is Not a Reproduction
My husband and I were new to antiquing. We were looking for a fun way to spend some time together on the weekends. We had moved to North Carolina within the last year and I had noticed a lot of terrific antique shops about an hour from where we lived. Shopping for antique furniture sounded like fun and we needed to furnish some rooms in our new home.
Knowing nothing about antiques meant we had a lot to learn... That being said, the first piece we bought was a beautiful antique oak chair. I was in love with the rich detail the chair offered and the wonderful rich wood color. We brought our new/old chair home and found the perfect spot where we could display it.
After a few weeks I noticed that the chair had some slight damage and I decided to have it fixed. When I brought it to a furniture restorer I was surprised and disappointed to learn that my antique-oak-chair is a reproduction antique chair. I explained that we bought it from an antique dealer but the furniture restorer showed me how he knew the chair was a reproduction simply based on the stamp of the manufacturer.
Disappointment was written all over my face for sure. I felt as if I had been taken advantage of because we did not have a good working knowledge of antiques and the sales person must have known. The restorer asked me what I paid for the chair and he told me that I payed way too much for this reproduced antique-oak-chair.
When I got home I called my husband and told him what I had learned. We decided to go back to the shop where we got the chair to get a refund. The owner of the shop informed us that they sell reproductions as well as originals and that he was not aware that we did not know that our antique-oak-chair was a reproduction.
When I mentioned that the furniture restorer said that we had paid too much, he told us that he did not agree and that the chair was well made and sold for a good value. All I know is that the next piece we buy we are going to do a lot more research and know exactly what it is that we are getting and what we are paying for. I am shopping for antique chairs!