The Windsor chair maker: 'What fascinates me is that a wooden chair can feel so lovely and comfortable. They just wrap themselves around you.'
Jim Steele has been making Windsor chairs by hand for a quarter of a century. He spoke to Tessa Waugh, with portraits by Richard Cannon.


‘I’m still learning all the different things to do with chairs,’ muses Jim Steele, who’s been making Windsor chairs in the traditional way for 25 years. ‘It took me about 5–10 years to get the basics, then it was a case of them [the chairs] grabbing me and saying “you can make me”, instead of me saying “I can make them”,’ he adds with a chuckle.
‘With the Windsor chair, there aren’t straight or square lines, they’re all ergonomic and that’s what fascinates me, that you can sit in a wooden chair and feel lovely and comfortable. They just wrap themselves around you.’
Traditionally, Windsor chairs, which have been made in the same way since the 1800s, had an elm seat, with the legs, stretchers and top pieces hewn from ash.
However, now the wood is so scarce – thanks to the spread of Dutch elm disease, which caused many craftsmen to opt for ash over elm – Mr Steele tops six of his eight designs with a yew frame. ‘I’m a green woodworker, which is the old way of working with wood,’ he explains.
The wood is felled in winter and Mr Steele begins working with it in the late spring or early summer, making legs and stretchers on a pole lathe and steam-bending the bent parts.
‘I love the fact that you can change Nature,’ he enthuses. ‘I also bend the spindles, which go into the back, into a lumber bend, to give the chair a good sitting position.’
Mr Steele is 80 now, but with a backlog of orders to complete, there’s no chance of retirement yet.
Sign up for the Country Life Newsletter
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
‘In the evening, if my back aches, I can sit in my chair with the paper and it helps,’ he says.
Credit: ©Richard Cannon/Country Life Picture Library
The Pigeon Fancier: 'I set up a deckchair in the garden and wait for them to come back. That’s the most exciting part.'
This week’s Living National Treasure is Colin Hill, a pigeon fancier whose birds regularly race from the tip of Scotland
The dry stone wall builder: 'Every metre of wall contains a ton of stone. You really feel it after a hard week.'
This week's Living National Treasure is Anthony Gorman, a man who has spent his life building beautiful walls by hand
The Florist: 'What I do is like good cooking – if you have beautiful ingredients, you can’t go wrong'
This week's Living National Treasure is royal florist Shane Connolly – and while he might be based in Britain, he's
The gold stamper: ‘The younger generation is very appreciative of artisan work – they’re the ones driving the trend’
This week's Living National Treasure is John Timms, the man who leads the team that stamps gold lettering into thousands
The neon sign maker: 'Piccadilly Circus was our answer to Vegas – now it's all pixellated screens'
This week's Living National Treasure is Marcus Bracey, the man behind the neon signs that light up our cities. He
Credit: Living National Treasure: The Glassblower - ©Country Life/Richard Cannon
The Glassblower: 'When something goes wrong you can't fix it – you just sling in into the bosh bucket and start again'
Ian Shearman's team of glassblowers are still making glass using a technique that's 2,000 years old. Mary Miers found out
Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.
-
If heaven is on earth, it might be in this home with a converted chapel that is now a swimming pool
5 Wood Barton Town House is part of an exclusive 80-acre development in Devon that also comes with fishing rights on the River Avon and four bedrooms.
By James Fisher Published
-
An Italian-inspired recipe for lemon-butter pasta shells with spring greens, ricotta and pangrattato
Spring greens are just about to come into their own, so our Kitchen Garden columnist reveals exactly what to do with them.
By Melanie Johnson Published