The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be the most important. While many other items (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to complex makes for example the bench or sofa, which may be regarded 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 interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic craft; it was historically a symbol of social place. From the old royal courts there were significant differences between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. Since the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior dignity, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture creation, the chair is employed for a wealth of variations. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, 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.
Our lifestyle has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes have been changed to conform to growing human needs. For its unique association with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when being utilised. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly evaluated with a person using it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the various limbs of the chair have been given labels like the elements of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental job of your chair is to support a body, its credit is valued primarily by how well it measures up to this practical use. In the structure of a chair, the designer is bound in particular static rules and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There are civilizations that created significant chair types, as expressions of the topmost craft in the areas of handling and creativity. Out of these such cultures, special 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 structures of expert design, were a finding from tomb findings. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs formed as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular construction was made. There was in our understanding no noteworthy differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The simple difference existed in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created to be an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that chair persisted til much later points. But the stool also was created for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be noted, 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 constructed in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are formed from wood. The plain build of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, came again but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient item still extant but as in a trove of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were seen. These curved legs were likely to be manufactured with bent wood and were as such subjected to a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super solid and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; existing casts of seated Romans show evidence of a more heavyset and are a rather more crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist period. The klismos influence is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of notable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of sketches and artworks has been preserved, with images of the interiors and exteriors of Chinese households and their furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing similarity to images of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles are marginally curved by the arms for the purpose of sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Each of the three limbs had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of a back splat then had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a particular limit stabilise corner joints (and are loose in the bargain) are a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs probably were kept only for senior persons in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and held in its 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. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour in large 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
In 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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