Wycombe Folding Dining Chair

Natural rush comes from freshwater bulrushes and has been used for furniture making for centuries. It has a variable colour that’s often green to begin with, whereas Wycombe’s seat, woven from a paper made with rush, is a more even pale cream colour. It’s also much stronger.

As well as this folding dining chair and its fixed counterpart, there’s also a two-seater bench and a stool in our Wycombe collection, making it one of our most versatile designs. It means you can create a coordinating combination of seats around your table that works perfectly for you.

Designed after the fixed Wycombe chair, this folding one looks and feels just the same – there’s no compromise in style or comfort just because it’s a folding chair. If you’d like to read more about its story, just head on over to our journal.

The antique naval chair that inspired us to create a folding chair came apart into several pieces before it would collapse flat. We felt that was a bit fiddly though, so we’ve used hinges that allow the seat to lift up and the sides to fold in, creating a flat piece for storing away easily. It’ll also stand up on all four legs when flat, so it’s less likely to fall over while in storage.

While that antique piece had removeable reinforcing bars between the legs to keep them in place and secure when the seat’s being used, we’ve chosen to strengthen the seat itself instead. It means no extra pieces to potentially lose, and nothing to worry about while you’re sitting on Wycombe.

Wycombe might have a very neat and upright profile, but the stretcher – the horizontal piece at the top of the backrest – is curved, which means it hugs comfortably around your shoulders. And, as well as adding natural texture, the rush seat is also slightly springy – ideal if you find wooden seats just a little too firm.

Oak’s sense of tradition together with its distinctive (but not too knotty) grain make it our go-to timber. Naturally durable when it comes to knocks, we’ve further protected the oak from spills with IsoGuard® – our oil-based formula that doesn’t mask the timber’s character. You can find out more about that here.