The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture forms, the chair might be the most imperative. While most of the other objects (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be looked upon here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further types for example the bench and sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic piece of art; it was also symbolic of social placement. Within the past royal courts there were significant differences between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to use a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior standing, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In a furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a variety of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have been perfected to match to changing human uses. Because of its particular importance with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when being used. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and clearly evaluated by a person using it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several areas of the chair were given names likened to the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary job of a chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated generally on how completely it measures up to this practical role. Within the design of a chair, the builder is bound with some static legislation and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that have created unique chair types, as expressive of the foremost endeavour in the areas of craft and design. From such peoples, a note 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of masterful craft, are now a finding 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 typical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular construction was obtained. There was in our understanding no noteworthy change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The real variation lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made to be an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this kind stayed til much later points in time. But the stool also then was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be found, 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 were made in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are formed from wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then appeared but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient fossil still extant but as found in a trove of pictorial evidence. The better recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be shown. These odd legs were likely to be created out of bent wood and were thus needed to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very durable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; evidence of models of seated Romans are examples of a heavier and are a kind of less delicately designed klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were brought back in the Classicist period. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of profound uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as far as that of Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and artworks has been preserved, showing the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a trove of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting similarity to pictures of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was constructed both with or without arms but always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles are slightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its chairback). The three areas had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of the back splat later had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a particular extent support corner joints (and are loose in the bargain) represent an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were kept for elderly persons, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Paintings display a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of quite thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popularised 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 popular 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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