The History of the Chair
Of all furniture pieces, the chair may be of the most importance. While many other items (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative types like the bench or sofa, which may be considered 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 a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic object; it historically is symbolic of social standing. At the Medieval royal courts there were significant signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. In the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In a furniture form, the chair is utilised for a number of various purposes. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds has adapted to match to growing human desires. From its significant connection with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when utilised. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the different areas of a chair were given labels according to the parts of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic purpose of a chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated principally for how well it fulfills this practical purpose. In the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is limited with the static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers an epoch of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that created individual chair shapes, as expressive of the foremost work in the spheres of handling and art. Within those societies, a note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled design, are seen from tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs designed akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular form was obtained. There seemed to be no particular change from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The simple variation lied in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured to be an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool this chair persevered during much later periods of time. But the stool then also played the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were created from wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient fossil still existing but in a variety of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are displayed. These curving legs were considered to have been created out of bent wood and were likely to have been bore huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very durable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; a number of casts of seated Romans are designs of a heavier and apparently kind of less delicately built klismos. Both features, the light or heavy, were popularised within the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular types of profound originality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be traced as far back as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and artworks has been kept, displaying the inside and outside of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a number of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing resemblance to images of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is seen both with and without arms however always having a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles were slightly curved above the arms so as to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). Together, all three limbs were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the back splat later had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that just to a restricted ability embolden corner joints (and were loose to top that off) are an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were allowed only for elderly persons, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decorative issues are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same time, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be found in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not decided that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of 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 form—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer chairs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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
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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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