I'll bet they were un finished furniture of maybe 20 25 years ago.... There was a lot of that sort of stuff....with the rush seats. If they had been old they would have has split hickory....which is why I said the seats were not old. Also if they were old the construction would have the back slpats tenoned into the rails....and there would be wear on the top back splat....and likely the rear legs would be shorter than the front from shoving back from a table....and the seat would be about an inch lower. Worth....depending on where you are....$35 a chair?...Maybe not that much. Linda C

Thanks, Linda C and sweeby! I may not sell them after all. I'm not sure where to put them, though... They are not really very good dining chairs because they're uncomfortable to sit in. I think we may be bigger than the people who originally owned these. LOL! They are also too wide across the front (by about 1/2 inch...ugh) to fit underneath my antique vanity and desks, or I'd use them there. I'm just not sure what to do with them, but I'd be sad to see them go just because they're beautiful and they have history to them. sweeby, I'm in Arizona. I used to live in Texas, but I don't suppose that helps you :D. Planning any trips? I'd love to give them to someone who could use them in their home in some way. My house just isn't big enough to have extra chairs scattered lightly about. Sigh.

I've been searching both online and in books to find the age and identity of this ladderback chair with no luck. It is 4' + 1/2" high, the width is 2' from arm to arm, and the seat is 19 5/8 x 14 5/8. Thanks for any help. This post was edited by Scoop29 on Thu, Oct 10, 13 at 7:18

It helps to go to the horse's mouth to get an idea of things like what a chair was purposed for when it was built. I ask about seat height because it's a number typically listed in late 19th and early 20th century catalogues. One will notice that kitchen chairs, sewing chairs, dressing chairs, occasional chairs and dining chairs tended to have different seat heights, and some chairs were built specifically for adolescents and older children. Since it was obvious one chair didn't match, and the seats were so short to the floor, I wanted to know if the seat heights were constant. The fact that they are and that they're too short to be for dining use speaks to the probability they were all cut off to match a common seat height. Of course one or more chairs might have had a worn leg, but these were all modified at one time, and painted at one time to look like a matched set. Nobody claimed that the person who did it did it well. Defining whether one or all was meant to be a dining chair would be worth knowing and most of them did have a pretty constant seat height in that time frame because they had to be used with a dining table. Just going around measuring seat heights of random ladderbacks doesn't speak to what I was getting at. My ladderbacks have very tall seat heights, but I know what they are and where they came from. The were used in pool halls in the late 1800s and have been in the family since the turn of the century. The finial style and the type wood used, would help date these more closely. They are consistent with late 1800s, especially the one with the finials. I have found nearly exact duplicates of this style in that era. However, ladderbacks have such a long history they have been made right along. Take this one for instance. Looks pretty old, but is a pine repro from the early 1960. Saying we can tell you when these were in vogue, but given what you have shared....and with no real defining details, that's about all we can tell you other than surmising history.