The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture objects, the chair could be the imperative one. While the majority of other objects (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces for example the bench or sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic piece; it is also a symbol of social placement. In the old royal courts there were clear connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior standing, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.
In its furniture form, the chair is employed for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types have adapted to suit to changing human desires. Because of its particular link with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when being utilised. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood best and regarded best with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the individual areas of a chair are given names corresponding to the elements of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious purpose of the chair is to support your body, its worth is evaluated principally on how fully it measures up to this practical job. Within the structure of a chair, the builder is bound by some static law and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had iconic chair shapes, seen of the leading object in the industries of skill and art. Out of these such societies, special 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 objects of expert design, are found from tomb findings. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs designed similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular construction was crafted. There was in our understanding no particular variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The main variation existed in the kind of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured for an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool this form continued for much later points in time. But the stool then was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are worked from wood. The simple build of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, can be seen but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient item still existing but found in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be displayed. These curved legs were presumed to have been crafted in bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely durable and were plainly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek style; some models of seated Romans display examples of a thicker and apparently kind of more crudely designed klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were popularised in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of considerable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of sketches and paintings had been preserved, showing the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been found both with and without arms though always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles were lightly curved over the arms for the purpose of conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Each of the three limbs are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a limited limit embolden corner joints (and then are loose to top that off) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs presumably were only for elderly persons, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decorative issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is found in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of fairly thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 popularised 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 versions 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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