The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair may be the imperative one. While most of the other objects (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is regarded here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to further forms for example the bench or 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 overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it can also be symbolic of social placement. From the historical royal courts there were clear connotations between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior position, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In its furniture creation, the chair encompasses a range of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (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 have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds have been changed to suit to changing human uses. For its unique connection with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when in use. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen and tested by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several areas of a chair are given names according to the areas of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of the chair is to support your body, its credit is judged principally by how completely it fulfills this practical job. Within the manufacture of the chair, the chair maker is restricted with certain static regulation and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There were societies that had made unique chair shapes, expressions of the principal craft in the industries of skill and creativity. In such cultures, a note 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of careful make, were known from discoveries made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs structured as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular construction was crafted. There seemed to be no notable change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The general change lies in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed for an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool that chair persisted during much later periods of time. But the stool then was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were formed from wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, appeared but some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient item still in form but in a variety of pictorial material. The significant kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be visible. These unique legs were likely to be created out of bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super stable and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; existing models of seated Romans offer examples of a heavier and which appear to be a slightly more crudely constructed klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist time. The klismos influence is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special kinds of profound uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of sketches and artworks was kept safe, detailing the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting familiarity to representations of past chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with and without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one design, though, the stiles could be slightly curved over the arms in order to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Together, the three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a restricted extent reinforce corner joints (and are loose in the result) are a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs presumably were kept for elderly individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic elements are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and fixed 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 signature on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made 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 of them employ wood of rather thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more expensive examples might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won 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 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 products 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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