Spool Dining Chairs

“Where are those chairs from?” It’s a question that’s asked every time I share my dining room. I’m happy to share, but unfortunately, nobody is selling the same ones anymore.

We used to have Industry West’s Marais A chairs at the table. We still have them stored in the basement — they’re stackable and we use them when hosting for Christmas or other large gatherings.

They’re great chairs and hold up beautifully, but I liked them better in our previous house. I wanted a different look here, and it took a while before we were ready to buy. A full set of 8 dining chairs is expensive! Just as we were ready to purchase and I had decided on Abacus dining chairs by Noir, they were discontinued. I was almost able to get them at a great price because of it, but there weren’t enough left in stock. Next on my list was Redford House’s Abigail chair, but then I came across Baxton Studio’s Heather chair and those are the ones we have in our dining room.

The Abacus and Heather chairs are so similar because they’re both reproductions of antique spool chairs. Below are examples from 1st Dibs (chair 1, 2).

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So where can you buy them now?

I started sourcing for this post in hopes of finding similar styles, and there are not many out there. The closest right now would be One Kings Lane’s Barton Spindle Side Chairs.

Ballard Designs’ Livia Spool Chair has similar elements and is very cute. The Redford House Abigail chair I had initially considered is still in production too. I’m not aware of anything more spot-on, but if this were for a client, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of these.

Going vintage/antique is another good option for simimlar chairs, and a coat of black paint on an interesting shape goes a long way. Phrases to search for online in this case: spool, spindle, bobbin, turned, barley twist, Jenny Lind. Spool is the most accurate term, but all of those have the potential to turn up something similar. Searching for other historical styles can be helpful (they’re sometimes mislabeled). Try “side chair” or “dining chair” and Jacobean, Georgian, colonial, federal, empire, regency, or ladder back.

And whatever chairs you have, if the seats are upholstered I highly, highly, highly recommend getting seat covers to safeguard against kids or other particularly messy people in your life. These are the ones we have (you can see the straps on the chair in the center below). The fabric would be so gross on the kids’ seats if we didn’t have the covers on.