The History of the Chair
Of all furniture pieces, the chair may be the primary one. While most of the other objects (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to further pieces like a bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic object; it historically was symbolic of social standing. At the past royal courts there were plain connotations between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. From the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been an identifier of superior dignity, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
In a furniture construction, the chair holds a number of various purposes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have been evolved to fit to evolving human needs. Due to its close relationship with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when in employ. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and regarded best by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the several elements of the chair are named according to the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious role of the chair is to support our body, its worth is valued firstly by how suitably it does measure up to this practical job. In the construction of the chair, the designer is bound for particular static laws and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There were cultures that made iconic chair shapes, expressive of the premier work in the arenas of technique and aesthetics. Out of those peoples, special note needs to be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled scheme, are now a finding from findings made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular construction was crafted. There was from our view no marked differentiation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The only change existed in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed as an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool that chair continued til much later points. But the stool also was created as the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were made from wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappears but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient object still around but in a variety of pictorial material. The most recognisable is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are displayed. These unusual legs were understood to be created with bent wood and were as such bore extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very strong and were plainly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; existing statues of seated Romans are examples of a thicker and apparently rather crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist period. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular types of marked individuality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be followed as far back as in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of sketches and artworks has been kept, showing the insides and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing likeness to pictures of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been found both with and without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one image, however, the stiles were lightly curved on top of the arms in order to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, the three parts were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the back splat later had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a restricted limit support corner joints (and then are loose to top that off) signify a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs probably were kept for senior persons, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings project a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of rather thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popularised in large parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).
Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became commonly known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
During the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.
In cheaper brands of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.
Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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