This barber-surgeon's chair is made from oak with the legs and arms made from the branches. It is believed to be 16th century and was discovered in an inn in Lincolnshire in the 1920s. It appeared in Bazaar Exchange and Mart in 1927 when it was described as being for sale in a gallery on the King’s Road, Chelsea.

In 1375, the Barbers’ Company of London was in a position to petition for rights to control barbery and surgery in the city; there was also a Fellowship of Surgeons but they practised surgery only. In 1462 the Barbers’ Company gained their first charter which confirmed old privileges and  specifically quoted the drawing of teeth. In 1540, the two bodies merged in the Company of Barber-Surgeons but with a firm distinction between the two: no surgeon was permitted to practise barbery and barbers were restricted in surgery to extracting teeth. In 1745, the barbers and the surgeons split to form two separate bodies.

Until at least 1800, any barber could combine hair-cutting with both tooth extraction and blood-letting. According to the poet John Gay (1685-1732):

"His pole with pewter basons hung 
Black rotten teeth in order strung,
Rang’d cups, that in the window stood,
Lin’d with red rags to look like blood,
Did well his threefold trade explain,
Who shav’d, drew teeth and breath’d a vein."