The History of the Chair
From all the furniture needs, the chair could be the most imperative. While most other pieces (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms such as a bench and sofa, which can be regarded 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 exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic piece; it historically was symbolic of social place. In the past royal courts there were plain differences between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior rank, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a number of different models. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has derived unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has changed to fit to differing human needs. Due to its unique importance with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when in use. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood best and evaluated by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the various limbs of a chair are given names like the elements of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental job of your chair is to support our body, its worth is judged principally on how suitably it fulfills this practical role. In the creation of the chair, the maker is restricted under some static regulation and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There are civilizations that have created distinctive chair forms, expressions of the highest object in the spheres of handling and creativity. Out of such civilisations, 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 construct of expert make, are today seen from tomb findings. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular structure was obtained. There was in our view no significant differentiation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The only difference lied in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was created as an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that type persisted for much later points in time. But the stool then was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are created out of wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of those is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still in form but as seen in a trove of pictorial material. The archetype is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them could be visible. These unique legs were thought to have been manufactured with bent wood and were probably put under a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very stable and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; evidence of statues of seated Romans display designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a slightly less delicately crafted klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos design can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of marked uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of sketches and artworks has been preserved, displaying the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing similarity to images of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair can be found both with or without arms although never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, however, the stiles are lightly curved above the arms so as to sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). The three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of the Chinese back splat later had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a restricted limit reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited form. These chairs needed 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 households of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for the senior people in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not look to have been constructed by either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour in many 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 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.
For a great deal on reception desks in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Sphere: Related Content