The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair might be the paramount one. While most of the other items (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be used here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds for example the bench or 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 an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic item; it historically is symbolic of social status. From the old royal courts there were clear connotations between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior rank, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher level.
In a furniture purpose, the chair is used for a number of variations. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds has evolved to conform to differing human requirements. Because of its particular importance with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when being utilised. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and tested with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the several areas of the chair are labeled as the elements of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal role of your chair is to support a body, its value is tested generally by how suitably it does fulfill this practical job. Within the creation of a chair, the builder is restricted with particular static regulations and principal measurements. Within these rules, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that held individual chair shapes, as expressive of the principal craft in the spheres of technique and design. Within these cultures, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled design, are now found from tomb findings. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs structured not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular structure was crafted. There was to all appearances no marked variation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The only variation was in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured as an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that stool stayed til much later periods of time. But the stool also then was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were worked with wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, also appeared some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient specimen still in form but as seen in a variety of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs would be visible. These curving legs were understood to have been created in bent wood and were thus subjected to huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super solid and were plainly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; quite a few casts of seated Romans display designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a rather crudely built klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were popularised in the Classicist time. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special types of profound iconicism around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be followed as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of images and paintings had been protected, with images of the inside and outside of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing likeness to styles of ancient chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be designed both with and without arms though never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms so as to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). The three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the Chinese back splat had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a restricted limit support corner joints (as well as being loose in the result) indicate a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs most likely were allowed only for elderly persons, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been constructed with either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks display a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the 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 design of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won 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
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 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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