We often think of a high chair as a simple chair with long legs to raise it high enough for an adult to feed the baby easily. Indeed, most high chairs are exactly that, but through the years, designers experimented with all sorts of features.

Very early high chairs, dating from the 18th century, often consisted of a small chair atop a storage cabinet. These were difficult to move, so they gave way to chairs on long legs, but innovation didn’t stop there.

Some designers resisted the idea of single-purpose furniture and wanted expensive high chairs to serve several purposes. The Victorians delighted in convertible chairs, ones whose legs could collapse and turn into rockers or strollers. Perhaps the oddest combination came later in the 1930s: Lammerts 1933-34 catalogue features an expensive high chair that came with a porcelain insert of pot and lid so that it could convert from a station for feeding (with the lid down) to one for eliminating (lid raised). The chamber pot was removable for cleaning.

Mostly, though, families were content with high chairs designed to keep the child
safe and confined. They wanted three features: a chair high enough for an adult to
comfortably feed a baby, a tray on which to place food, either for spoon-feeding or
for the baby to feed herself, and a footrest for stability. Of these, the footrest made
the biggest difference to the child. Without it, she must hold herself steady, destabilizing her core muscles, and making eating difficult; with it, she can relax and focus on eating, which improves motor skills and eating habits and lessens the chance of choking.

Tappmeyer has three high chairs in its collection, though none are original to the
house. They all have footrests and feeding trays (one is missing its tray) and date
from the late 19th to early 20th century, the heyday of manufactured furniture, a time of innovations in machinery and materials that made furniture affordable. Before the Civil War, each piece of furniture was handmade and expensive. After it, mills made legs, chair backs, etc., which furniture makers combined into finished pieces. When the price came down for adult furniture, it made it possible for families to afford high chairs as well. The late 1800s and early 1900s saw many elegant high chairs, often with high-end furniture details like caning, spoon carving, exotic woods, and turned legs.