The History of the Chair
From all the furniture items, the chair may be the primary one. While most other items (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be regarded here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed forms like the bench or sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic piece; it was also a signifier of social placement. Within the Medieval royal courts there were plain connotations between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior status, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture purpose, the chair holds a number of various forms. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs 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/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes has adapted to suit to changing human desires. Due to its unique importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when utilised. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly tested by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the various areas of the chair are labeled like the areas of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear purpose of the chair is to support our human body, its value is tested principally on how fully it does measure up to this practical job. In the build of a chair, the maker is restricted within particular static regulation and principal measurements. Through these limitations, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There were cultures that had iconic chair forms, expressions of the highest endeavour in the arenas of technique and aesthetics. From those peoples, special 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of careful scheme, are today found from findings made in tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs designed not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was crafted. There was from our knowledge no particular variation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The real difference exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was crafted for an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool this form stayed for much later periods. But the stool then existed in the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can already be observed, 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 made in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed of wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then appeared some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this form is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient item still extant but as in a large amount of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place 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 which could be shown. These strange legs were presumed to have been manufactured in bent wood and were therefore needed to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely durable and were visibly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; designs of models of seated Romans show chairs of a thicker and apparently slightly crudely designed klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special kinds of notable individuality of Denmark and Sweden around 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 time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and artworks was preserved, detailing the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing similarity to styles of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is seen both with and without arms although always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, however, the stiles could be delicately curved on top of the arms so as to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). All three limbs are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of the back splat later had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose in the result) signify a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs presumably were kept for senior people, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of quite thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer items would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. 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 in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular 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 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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