The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be paramount. While many other objects (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be looked upon here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms for example the bench or sofa, which should be viewed 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 interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic piece; it historically was semiotic of social standing. In the historical royal courts there were significant connotations between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior dignity, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture construction, the chair can be employed for a range of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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.
Modern living has developed particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have evolved to conform to evolving human requirements. Due to its particular connection with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when utilised. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is best seen and regarded best by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various limbs of a chair were labeled corresponding to the limbs of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental work of your chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated principally for how fully it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is bound with certain static laws and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had individual chair shapes, expressive of the principal work in the areas of technique and art. From these such 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of expert design, are today seen from tomb findings. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular design was crafted. There was from our understanding no noteworthy change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The real difference lies in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was developed to be an easily stored seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that chair stayed during much later days. But the stool then also was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are created from wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was then seen at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient item still around but seen in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The most recognisable is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which could be visible. These strange legs were considered to be manufactured of bent wood and were as such had a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely solid and were visibly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; designs of models of seated Romans are designs of a heavier and in appearance rather less intricately designed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some kinds of notable originality around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be followed as far back as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and artworks had been kept, showing the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing similarity to pictures of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with and without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). The three areas were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of a back splat had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a restricted ability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose into the bargain) signify a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were only for older individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both furniture items is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is seen 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. Though this style of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely 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 of styles—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all 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 taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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
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 brands 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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