The History of the Chair
Of all furniture pieces, the chair might be the most imperative. While many other pieces (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the general sense, from stool to throne to developed chairs such as the bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic object; it is historically an indicator of social placement. At the old royal courts there were important signifiers between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. During the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as iconic of superior standing, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture form, the chair is used for a wealth of different forms. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes have been adapted to conform to differing human requirements. Because of its unique connection with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when being used. Though it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly regarded by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various parts of a chair are given labels corresponding to the limbs of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original work of the chair is to support our body, its credit is evaluated basically by how well it does fulfill this practical job. In the creation of the chair, the designer is limited by the static legislation and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There were cultures that held iconic chair types, as expressive of the premier craft in the areas of skill and aesthetics. In these peoples, particular 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of masterful design, are known from findings made in tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs designed like those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular design was obtained. There was from our view no noteworthy differentiation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The only change existed in the type of ornamentation, in the selection of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed to be an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool the type continued during much later points. But the stool also then was created for the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came up some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient specimen still in form but seen in a large amount of pictorial material. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are seen. These unique legs were presumed to be created of bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super strong and were clearly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; evidence of casts of seated Romans are chairs of a denser and which appear to be a kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist time. The klismos style is seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular forms of marked uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be charted as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of images and paintings has been preserved, with images of the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and their furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting familiarity to pictures of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair was found both with or without arms although never without its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). Together, the three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a limited ability support corner joints (and then were loose additionally) represent a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs probably were allowed only for elderly family members, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but were mortised into 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 left its name on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious 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 style—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of quite thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 commonly known 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 products 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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