Melissa - Go to "photobucket.com, open an account and store the pictures there. They will give you good instructions on how to do it. Then come back here and post the link to the pictures. This is what we need, in GOOD focus: 1 - full-front, back and side views of the whole chair, well-lit and in front of a non-cluttered background. 2 - well-lit close-ups of the major carvings 3 - well-lit closeups of the seta 4 - well-lit closeups of the joints, or places where chairs normally have joints so we can look for construction techniques.

Can you upload pictures that are larger? You seem to have "thumbnails instead of real pictures. And it's the details that are important for deciding origin and age. Take good, well-lit, (not flash, bring in The style is a "Savonarola chair", and they have been popular for centuries.

I can't see the detail of the back well enough, but it appears to have been cut/carved from a single board. That's unusual. That would have been a big board. The carved work is notable. The arms have an unusual shape and seem to hve been made from one piece. If the arms and back were made from single pieces of wood, there was a lot of waste wood. This would not have been a design for large scale production. Could it have been a school shop project, an apprentice graduating piece, or a one of a kind by a craftsman. It appears it is a rocking chair. The legs are not braced very much. In front, there is no bracing in the left-to-right direction, and bracing in the plane of the rockers is minumal. The seat must be thick with the legs firmly embeded in it. A 300 lb person could wreck this chair.

Dye would be ideal if you had a lot of the wood in question to experiment on till you get the color right. A more forgiving approach might be to use thin coats of one or more gel stain(s), applied with a rag. More or slightly thicker coats on the lighter wood so as to gradually bring its color toward that of the darker wood. Work a small area at a time. (Like an arm.) Follow with a gel varnish, which is marvelous for things with complicated shapes and lots of vertical surfaces, like chairs. I'd think about sealing the wood first with gel varnish (possibly preceded by any sealer recommended by the gel varnish manufacturer) and then using subsequent coasts of gel stain like a glaze. That way you can remove most of the first coat of stain with mineral spirits if you don't like how it looks (providing you get to it before it dries). You can weaken the colors of gel stains with "natural" color gel stain (which I'm not sure differs in any way from plain gel varnish). I like General Finishes and Old Masters gel stains. You don't need to stick to shades that have "mahogany" in their names. A lot of those are too red to my eye, especially on a red wood like mahogany. I've had luck using a little Special Walnut and/or Dark Walnut on both mahogany and cherry. Once you have a base, you can wipe on any color gel stain you want to and wipe it right off with mineral spirits if you don't like the result.