Napoleon Hat Corner Chair

Some chairs are furniture and some are jokes told beautifully in wood and this one is the second kind. Look at the back. It is a bicorne, Napoleon's hat, carved from the solid with the brim rolling out to scrolled ends at either side and the French cabinetmakers who first made these in the nineteenth century knew exactly what they were doing, a chair for the hall that made every visitor smile before they'd taken their coat off.

Under the hat the joinery is serious. The seat is a single sculpted saddle, dished for the sitter and finished at the front in a rolled edge that curls into scrolls at the corners, all of it carved rather than built up, so the grain flows unbroken from the back down through the seat.

Three legs, not four, because this is a corner chair and three legs settle on any floor, turned and tapered with a swell at the ankle and bulb feet, tied together low by a Y-form stretcher with turned knops at each junction. The timber is warm, honey-toned and heavily figured, polished to a deep glow that makes the carving of the hat read like poured toffee.

For the hallway that needs its one conversation piece, the corner of a study that has been empty for want of the right object, or anyone who believes furniture is allowed a sense of humour. Hang up the coat. Salute the hat.