The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair might be the paramount one. While the majority of other objects (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to developed types like the bench or sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic creation; it historically was a symbol of social placement. In the historical royal courts there were important connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior standing, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In a furniture form, the chair encompasses a range of variations. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); since 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have changed to conform to different human desires. Due to its close importance with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when in employ. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly tested with a person using it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the different limbs of the chair have been given names as the names of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental function of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is tested principally on how well it does fulfill this practical role. In the structure of a chair, the chair maker is bound with certain static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that have created significant chair shapes, as seen of the leading object in the spheres of technique and aesthetics. Among these peoples, special note 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of expert design, are seen from findings made in tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs structured similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular structure was crafted. There appeared to be no significant differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The real change lied in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed for an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool this chair stayed for much later times. But the stool then was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool fast 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 ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were worked from wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient object still existing but in a large amount of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are displayed. These odd legs were understood to have been manufactured of bent wood and were therefore subjected to a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely solid and were particularly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans display chairs of a heavier and are a slightly less intricately designed klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist period. The klismos style is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special kinds of marked uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of sketches and artworks was kept, showing the insides and exteriors of Chinese houses and the furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting likeness to designs of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair is seen both with or without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles had been lightly curved by the arms so as to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its back). Each of the three areas are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the style of a back splat had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a particular capability support corner joints (and then are loose in the result) represent a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs presumably were reserved for senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation 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 viewpoint the resulting effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative elements are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art project a style 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 produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be 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 large amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The form 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—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology 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 the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more expensive chairs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite in large 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 reknowned 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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