The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair might be the paramount one. While most of the other objects (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed forms for example the bench and sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic piece; it is historically symbolic of social standing. From the past royal courts there were social connotations between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to sit on a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has risen a signifier of superior standing, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As its furniture construction, the chair can be used for a variety of different purposes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have adapted to match to growing human desires. From its particular connection with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when being utilised. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the various areas of the chair are named corresponding to the elements of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of your chair is to support a human body, its credit is tested primarily for how fully it does fulfill this practical use. Within the design of the chair, the carpenter is bound under the static regulation and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extended over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that had significant chair types, seen of the foremost work in the arenas of handling and aesthetics. In these civilisations, individual mention should 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert craft, are today known from tombs. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs structured akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular structure was obtained. There was in our understanding no marked differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The simple variation was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the type stayed around until much later periods of time. But the stool then also was made as the role of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are created of wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was seen again some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient object still extant but as seen in a trove of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those can be seen. These creative legs were most likely to be manufactured with bent wood and were probably had a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super durable and were overtly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; existing casts of seated Romans display chairs of a heavier and in appearance kind of less delicately crafted klismos. Both features, the light or the heavy, were popularised in the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular brands of marked individuality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of drawings and paintings had been protected, showing the insides and exterior of Chinese homes and their furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing likeness to representations of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be designed both with or without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles were slightly curved by the arms to sit correctly with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, all three limbs had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (and were loose in the bargain) indicate a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs most likely were only for elderly individuals, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been constructed by either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of quite thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite in several 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 well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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