The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be the paramount one. While many other items (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be looked upon here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds such as a bench or sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic artwork; it is historically a symbol of social status. At the old royal courts there were important signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. During the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior standing, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a range of various makes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since 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 can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has been adapted to match to differing human desires. For its significant connection with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in use. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and clearly evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the different elements of the chair are given names likened to the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal purpose of the chair is to support our body, its worth is judged primarily for how fully it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the structure of a chair, the chair maker is limited with some static rules and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair was dates of several thousand years. There are civilizations that had iconic chair shapes, as seen of the leading object in the spheres of technique and design. Out of those civilisations, individual mention 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 objects of expert craft, are a finding from findings made in tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs shaped like those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular design was obtained. There was in our knowledge no particular differentiation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The main change existed in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool this stool existed til much later periods. But the stool also then played the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were formed out of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of those is the folding stool, from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient object still existing but as in a wealth of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them would be shown. These strange legs were probably crafted with bent wood and were probably bore huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely stable and were particularly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; quite a few statues of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and which appear to be a somewhat less delicately constructed klismos. Both features, the light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos chair can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special types of profound individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far as in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of images and artworks had been protected, showing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese households and their furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting likeness to pictures of older chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair was seen both with or without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles could be lightly curved over the arms for the purpose of suit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). Together, the three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the back splat later had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a restricted extent embolden corner joints (and then were loose additionally) indicate a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs probably were kept for older individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been held together by either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 form—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms 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 little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 well-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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