The History of the Chair
Of all furniture items, the chair could be paramount. While most other pieces (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be said here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to further kinds such as a bench and sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic piece; it was historically an indicator of social ranking. From the historical royal courts there were significant distinctions between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to cope with a stool. In the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior dignity, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is used for a range of various models. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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 can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has evolved to match to differing human requirements. Due to its unique importance with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when in use. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and regarded best by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the individual areas of a chair are given labels like the parts of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic work of your chair is to support our body, its credit is judged primarily from how completely it measures up to this practical use. In the creation of the chair, the carpenter is bound for particular static legislation and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair covered an era of several thousand years. There are societies that had made unique chair types, seen of the foremost work in the industries of technique and art. Among those cultures, special mention must 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 skilled design, are seen from tomb discoveries. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs designed akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular construction was crafted. There was in our knowledge no notable variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The general variation lied in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made for an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool this chair stayed for much later periods of time. But the stool also was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today 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 construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came up at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still in form but as seen from a wealth of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are seen. These strange legs were likely to have been created from bent wood and were as such needed to bear huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super durable and were plainly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; a number of casts of seated Romans are examples of a heavier and are a somewhat less delicately constructed klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were popularised during the Classicist period. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special brands of marked individuality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and artworks was kept, detailing the inside and exteriors of Chinese houses and their furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing resemblance to styles of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, however, the stiles are slightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). All three limbs were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of this back splat exercised an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and then were loose as a result) represent a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks project 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 the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by 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 was, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour 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 popular 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 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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