Montaigne Skirted Chair

The chair is built to the same drawing as the Montaigne sofa and shares its numbers: the same forty-inch depth, the same seat and arm heights, the same roll. Set side by side, the arms line up and the skirts break at one level — which is the whole point of buying the pair.

The frame is kiln-dried hardwood, corner-blocked and doweled, with the seat rails glued and screwed as well as pinned. Eight-way hand-tied springs carry the seat. On a seat this wide that is not a talking point but a necessity: it is what stops the middle dropping below the sides after a few years of one person always sitting in the same place.

The arms are full rolls built over a curved frame rather than stuffed to shape, so the scroll holds its radius instead of flattening. Each nailhead is placed and driven by hand in a continuous line — down the face of each arm, around the scroll, and along the base. Spacing is set out by eye against the finished chair rather than to a fixed measure, because the eye reads an even curve where a ruler does not.

The skirt is box-pleated with a kick pleat at each corner, lined and weighted at the hem so it hangs straight and clears the floor by a fraction. It is attached at a self-welted seat line, the seam that keeps the whole lower half from reading soft.

A single bench cushion runs the full width between the arms, with one loose back cushion and one lumbar bolster, matching the sofa's arrangement at chair scale. Cushions are high-resilience cores wrapped in a down-and-fiber blend, loose and reversible. Where the cloth has a direction, the pattern is matched across the seat, the inside back and the arm faces, and railroaded on the outside back.

Vacuum the upholstery on a low setting, including under the skirt, and rotate both cushions every few weeks so they wear evenly. Wipe the nailheads with a dry cloth only — never a metal polish, which will bleed onto the surrounding cloth. Keep the chair out of direct sun.

Full guidance for every material we use is on the Care & Materials page.

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