The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture items, the chair could be the imperative one. While most other pieces (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds for example the 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 overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it can also be an indicator of social standing. At the historical royal courts there were important differences between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to cope with a stool. In the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been iconic of superior dignity, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher level.
As a furniture creation, the chair can be employed for a range of variations. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms have adapted to conform to differing human uses. Due to its significant relationship with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when in use. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be items inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly evaluated with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several elements of a chair have been given labels according to the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary work of a chair is to support the human body, its credit is tested generally from how well it does measure up to this practical use. Within the design of a chair, the maker is bound in some static laws and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an epoch of several thousand years. There are societies that made distinctive chair types, as expressive of the premier work in the areas of skill and aesthetics. Among these such societies, special mention can 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 items of expert design, are today found from tomb findings. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was created. There was in our understanding no marked variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The general change existed in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was made as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the form persevered for much later times. But the stool also was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be seen, 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 made in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were created out of wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, came up but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still existing but as found in a variety of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs could be shown. These unusual legs were likely to have been crafted of bent wood and were thus had great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely solid and were visibly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; designs of casts of seated Romans display examples of a heavier and in appearance slightly less delicately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular brands of profound originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and paintings had been kept safe, detailing the interiors and exterior of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting likeness to images of older chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was seen both with or without arms however always having the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, however, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the Chinese back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a limited limit reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose to top it off) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs most likely were reserved for senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic parts are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been put together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art display a type 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 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. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be found in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself with its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 commonly known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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