Leather is the material the Chesterfield shape was built for, and every leather Chesterfield chair here proves it, deepening in colour year after year. Handmade in Manchester, ten...
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Leather is the material the Chesterfield was invented for, which is why every other covering ends up being described in relation to it. The deep buttoning was designed to hold a hide taut across a curved back, and the rolled arms exist because leather takes a curve better than almost anything else you could stretch across a frame.
There is also the small matter of what happens over the following ten years. A fabric chair looks its absolute best on the day it arrives and slowly declines from there, while a leather Chesterfield chair starts out handsome and spends the following decade becoming considerably more interesting.
Here is the part that surprises people, because leather is not one material at all.
If you are unsure where to begin, order up to six free swatches and they will reach you within a few working days.
The practical argument is stronger than the romantic one, though both hold up well. A hide handles daily life in a way no woven cloth can quite match, which matters enormously on a chair that will be sat in every single evening for years.
The range matters more than the colour, since two chairs in one shade look entirely different depending on how the hide was tanned. Every range we upholster in is set out in full on Our Leather.
OLD ENGLISH
An aniline finished pull-up leather, lightly buffed and tanned with oils and waxes to give a warm, aged appearance. It crackles and shifts tone as it stretches, and the natural scarring and shading are deliberate rather than flaws.
CRACKED WAX
A soft handling leather with a distinctly cracked surface and a resilient top coating for durability. It delivers the traditional Chesterfield character immediately, without waiting years for the chair to earn it.
URBAN
Hand buffed to an almost silk like finish and rather more refined, this range improves steadily with age. It suits anybody who prefers their leather understated rather than heavily distressed.
DUNO
A sealed leather that resists soiling and scratching while keeping plenty of character, which makes it a sensible choice for busy family rooms.
CHEROKEE
Waxy and crackled with a distressed matt finish, silky to the touch and coated to resist scratches without losing the natural markings across the hide.
Shade changes the mood of a room far more than the design of the chair does, so it is worth thinking about the light before the leather.
Leather flatters almost everything, though a few pairings genuinely make a chair look better than it did in the photograph.
Walls that work. Soft white and warm neutrals let a tan or cognac hide become the focal point of the corner. Deep forest green or ink blue is one of the loveliest backdrops a lighter leather can have, while warm plaster tones flatter both the buttoning and the leg finish.
Chairs to consider. The Conrad armchair shows a hide at its simplest, with nothing distracting from the buttoning. The Woodstock wing chair gives a distressed leather far more surface to be admired across, and a Chesterfield footstool in the same hide ages at exactly the same rate.
Leather asks very little, though the little it does ask makes a real difference across a decade of use.
Every piece is made to order in Manchester and arrives within six to eight weeks, delivered free across mainland Britain. Our in stock chairs leave a good deal sooner if timing matters.
Yes and beautifully so, since a hide deepens and softens where people sit most often. That is exactly what the antique and Old English ranges are made for.
Old English and Cherokee for visible character from day one, Urban for something softer and more understated. Duno is the sensible choice where a chair will take heavy daily use.
