The History of the Chair
From all the furniture pieces, the chair might be paramount. While most of the other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further items like the bench or sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic creation; it was historically semiotic of social hierarchy. In the past royal courts there were social distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to make do with a stool. In the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In its furniture construction, the chair is used for a number of various forms. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since 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 make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds have been changed to suit to evolving human desires. For its unique relationship with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when in use. While it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several parts of a chair were labeled as the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental function of a chair is to support a body, its credit is judged generally for how completely it fulfills this practical use. In the construction of the chair, the chair maker is bound within some static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these boundaries, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed cultures that have created distinctive chair forms, as expressive of the highest object in the arenas of craft and art. From these such peoples, particular mention 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 objects of skilled make, are today found from discoveries made in tombs. One of the 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 designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular structure was created. There was from our understanding no noteworthy variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The simple difference lies in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed for an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool the chair existed during much later times. But the stool then also existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are worked with wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still in form but from a trove of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs can be seen. These odd legs were possibly created with bent wood and were therefore had to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super solid and were overtly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; evidence of statues of seated Romans show examples of a more heavyset and which appear to be a rather crudely constructed klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of marked iconicism around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as long as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and artworks was preserved, with images of the interiors and exterior of Chinese homes and the furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting resemblance to styles of older chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair was designed both with and without arms however always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles had been marginally curved by the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). All three parts are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a limited ability embolden corner joints (and were loose in the bargain) are a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were reserved only for senior individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic parts are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been adjoined with either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto 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 put its signature on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, 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 the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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 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 design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket examples may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier 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 popularised 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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