The rail which connects the uprights of a chair-back and supports the cresting, if any. In some cases it is not possible to distinguish the top rail from the elaborate cresting, or in other cases from the uprights when they sweep over and meet each other, or lose themselves in the splat. In Elizabethan work the top rail was tenoned into the sides of the uprights, but in the seventeenth century it was more often dowelled only on to the top of the uprights ; in either case the top rail and cresting were important features. During the Queen Anne period, in the widest sense of the phrase, the tendency was for the top rail, if such it can be called, to be formed by a continuance of the uprights, with a sharp curve into the splat. A little later the straight, undulating, serpentine, and cupid's bow rails appeared. Chippendale developed these in his masterly manner, and sometimes added the spiral volutes at the ends. The wheel and oval backs of the brothers Adam, the hoop and interlacing heart-shape backs of Hepplewhite, can scarcely be said to have top rails, but these appeared again with Sheraton, who preferred the straight top rail, sometimes broken with curves, key corners, etc.