ladder-back chair

ladder-back chair, chair with a tall back constructed of horizontal slats or spindles between two uprights. The type is utilitarian and often rustic; the seat is often of cane or rush.

Appearing in the Middle Ages, ladder-back chairs had become widespread in England by the 17th century and were in common use in colonial America as well. By the middle of that century, they were also copied by fashionable furniture makers who used walnut instead of sycamore or maple and added elaborate refinements. The top slat, which even in simple types was usually larger than the others and was sometimes pierced for ease of handling, became richly ornamented. As piercing of the back slats progressed, they began to resemble the sound holes of a violin, and this type of chair came to be known as a fiddle back (a term also applied, until the second half of the 18th century, to another type of shaped chair, the appearance of which was thought to resemble that of a violin).