The History of the Chair
Of all furniture items, the chair may be the most imperative. While many other objects (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed types including a bench or sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
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 item; it was also an indicator of social standing. At the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to use a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior standing, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In a furniture purpose, the chair holds a range of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and 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.
Modern living has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has adapted to fit to growing human needs. From its unique relationship with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when in employ. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and regarded best with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the various parts of a chair are given labels likened to the names of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic job of a chair is to support a body, its credit is tested generally by how completely it does fulfill this practical use. In the construction of the chair, the builder is bound under particular static legislation and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had made iconic chair shapes, as seen of the highest endeavour in the arenas of technique and creativity. Within these such societies, a 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of masterful make, are seen from findings made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs shaped akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was crafted. There was apparently no marked change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The only change exists in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured to be an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that stool continued during much later days. But the stool also then was designed for the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The simplistic structure 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 as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient object still extant but from a wealth of pictorial material. The most well known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those would be visible. These curved legs were possibly crafted from bent wood and were likely to have been bore extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super stable and were overtly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans are evidence of a thicker and which appear to be a somewhat more crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special kinds of notable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of images and works of art had been protected, detailing the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing resemblance to images of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair was constructed both with and without arms though always having the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, however, the stiles had been marginally curved over the arms to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). The three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that just to a particular limit stabilise corner joints (and were loose in the result) are a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were only for older people in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been affixed by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain 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 in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by its shapely proportions and expensive 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 brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of quite thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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 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 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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