The History of the Chair
From all the furniture objects, the chair may be primary. While most of the other items (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was used here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to further kinds for example a bench or sofa, which may 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 exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic craft; it was historically a symbol of social hierarchy. In the historical royal courts there were plain connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. During the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In a furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a range of different models. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has developed new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes has been adapted to suit to differing human uses. Due to its particular link with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when in use. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood best and evaluated by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need the other. Thus the various elements of the chair were given labels as the elements of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear function of your chair is to support your body, its worth is valued primarily by how completely it fulfills this practical function. Within the construction of the chair, the maker is limited for the static rules and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair is a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that had made unique chair types, as expressions of the leading endeavour in the spheres of handling and aesthetics. Within these peoples, particular note needs to 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 upshot of expert make, were seen from tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular design was made. There was from our knowledge no marked variation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The only difference existed in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made as an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool this stool persisted for much later points in time. But the stool then also was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are formed with wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, was then seen at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient fossil still in form but as seen from a variety of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are seen. These unique legs were likely to have been crafted from bent wood and were probably needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were particularly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; some models of seated Romans display examples of a denser and which appear to be a slightly crudely crafted klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special types of profound iconicism within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of images and artworks had been protected, detailing the interior and exterior of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing likeness to designs of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair was seen both with and without arms but always having a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, however, the stiles are marginally curved over the arms so as to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). The three limbs had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the Chinese back splat exercised an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a limited extent support corner joints (and furthermore are loose as a result) represent a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were reserved only for the senior people in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decoration elements are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been adjoined with either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in 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 the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as indicated 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 harmonious proportions and expensive 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, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 styles 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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