Our new Brampton frame chair

We offer a lovely range of contemporary Windsor chairs alongside our dining tables, made to order for us by Sitting Firm chair makers in Coventry. They have the same focus on craftsmanship and native timbers as we do, so it feels like a good fit. However they only make Windsors - chairs with turned legs going into solid wood seats. We often get asked for frame chairs - ones with square or rectangular section legs jointed together by rails, often with upholstered seats. We've searched unsuccessfully for a British maker of frame chairs who can make small batches of chairs to order to the same standard as our tables, so we decided to design and make our own.

The brief we set ourselves was for a simple modern design with a low back that would compliment our Wistmans, Whittlewood and Avon tables. Most of all though, it had to be comfortable! With that in mind we moved quickly from sketches and scale drawings to a full size mock-up - a chair that looked good on paper would be no good if didn't support the back, and getting good support in the lumbar region is especially important on a low back chair. A few tweaks to seat angle and the curve and angle of the back and we were ready to make the first Brampton chair, in British oak with an upholstered seat in Duck egg blue.

The first chair was barely finished when we were asked to make a set of six to accompany a Wistmans table commission, but with solid wood seats, and with two of the chairs having higher backs. We liked the result - the two high backs really suit the head of the table, and we sculpted the wooden seats for maximum comfort - so we've now added all three versions of the Brampton chair to our collection. 

Our Brampton Chair was designed by award-winning chair designer and maker John Luff, who is an employee here at Orpago.

If you're interested in having a set of dining chairs made, take a look at our collection Handmade Chairs.