Recognising an antique chair: frame, upholstery and joints

Turn the chair over. Everything is decided there. The rails of an antique chair carry gouge and handsaw marks, irregular, never perfectly parallel like machine cuts.

Joints are mortise-and-tenon, locked with wooden pegs that stand slightly proud: the timber has shrunk around them over two centuries. A crosshead screw, on the other hand, fools nobody — it is modern.

Upholstery is rarely original. Traditional horsehair stuffing, webbed and hand-stitched, is recognised by its firm shape and straight edge. Re-upholstering takes nothing away from a chair's value; recutting its frame does.

The last marker is patina: it builds where hands pass — arms, the top of the back — and is missing where the piece rubs the floor.