The History of the Chair
From all the furniture forms, the chair could be the primary one. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds including the bench or sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and aesthetic creation; it can also be symbolic of social placement. At the past royal courts there were clear differences 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. In the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has risen a signifier of superior position, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture form, the chair ranges from a wealth of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have perfected to match to changing human needs. Due to its unique connection with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when in employ. Although it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and regarded best by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several elements of the chair have been labeled corresponding to the limbs of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original function of the chair is to support the body, its credit is judged firstly on how suitably it fulfills this practical function. Within the design of the chair, the builder is limited under some static legislation and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that made significant chair shapes, expressive of the principal endeavour in the industries of handling and art. In these such societies, special 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of careful craft, were known from findings made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs formed similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular construction was made. There was in our view no marked difference in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The general difference lies in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool this kind persevered for much later times. But the stool then also was made as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were formed from wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was seen again but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of those is the folding stool, of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient object still around but as seen from a variety of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those are visible. These curved legs were thought to have been manufactured with bent wood and were therefore had huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely solid and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; evidence of casts of seated Romans show evidence of a thicker and in appearance rather less delicately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were seen again during the Classicist period. The klismos style can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special kinds of profound individuality in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be traced as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and artworks has been preserved, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese houses and their furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing familiarity to images of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with or without arms although always having its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles were slightly curved above the arms for the purpose of suit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). The three areas were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat later had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (and were loose to top that off) signify a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were allowed only for elderly individuals, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration issues are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but were mortised with 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 design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is found in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are 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 considerable numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and finer examples might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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