twiggen

Out of 64 Ipswich inventories for 1583 to 1631, 15 mention one or more wicker chairs; moreover, they belonged to ordinary folk (tailors, a sailor, a butcher and a weaver) as well as to clerics and gentlemen.(65) A similar item, called `a twiggen chair', was owned by a Stockport alderman in 1642, and in the later seventeenth century `cane chairs' began to appear in some places.(66) By at least the later seventeenth century, rushes -- and perhaps straw -- were being used for chair seats; at Lincoln between 1672 and 1685 there were `rushy chairs', `matted chairs', `reeded wrought chairs', `wanded chairs', and `bass and wanded bottom chairs'.(67) There was also an occasional reference to a `straw chair'.