The History of the Chair
From all the furniture objects, the chair could be paramount. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be used here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed items such as a bench and sofa, which should be seen 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 exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic creation; it is also a signifier of social status. From the past royal courts there were plain distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. Since the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior rank, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
In its furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a wealth of variations. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, 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.
Modern day living has designated new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have been changed to conform to changing human uses. Because of its unique importance with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when being utilised. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and clearly evaluated by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the various parts of a chair have been given labels as the parts of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic work of a chair is to support the body, its credit is judged basically from how suitably it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the structure of a chair, the chair maker is bound in the static legislation and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There were peoples that had significant chair shapes, seen of the foremost work in the arenas of craft and design. Out of such civilisations, a 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled craft, are today a finding from discoveries made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs structured like those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular form was crafted. There seems to be no notable difference in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The main change lied in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was crafted for an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the type persisted for much later periods of time. But the stool also then existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold 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 recognised of those is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient item still existing but seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be displayed. These curved legs were possibly created of bent wood and were therefore bore a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very durable and were overtly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; existing casts of seated Romans are examples of a heavier and which appear to be a somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of considerable individuality within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and works of art has been kept safe, detailing the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and their furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing resemblance to representations of past chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair is seen both with or without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one style, though, the stiles could be delicately curved by the arms to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, all three areas had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the Chinese back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would only to a limited extent support corner joints (and are loose as well) signify a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were reserved only for older individuals in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic issues are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not seem to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be seen 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. Although this kind of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate 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 forms—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour in many 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
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 styles 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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