The History of the Chair
Of all furniture pieces, the chair might be the imperative one. While the majority of other pieces (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including the bench and sofa, which might be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or an aesthetic creation; it is also a signifier of social place. From the historical royal courts there were social signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. Since the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior position, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In its furniture creation, the chair can be employed for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the past there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types has been adapted to fit to growing human needs. From its significant relationship with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when utilised. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged best by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the individual limbs of the chair are given labels like the names of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of your chair is to support our body, its credit is judged basically from how fully it fulfills this practical function. In the construction of a chair, the builder is limited by particular static regulation and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There were peoples that have created significant chair forms, as seen of the topmost endeavour in the spheres of craft and design. Out of such societies, particular 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of masterful make, are now found from tomb findings. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular construction was obtained. There was to our knowledge no particular difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only change existed in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created to be an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool that form existed until much later points. But the stool then existed in the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were created of wood. The simplistic make 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 somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this kind is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient object still existing but as seen in a variety of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are shown. These unique legs were possibly executed out of bent wood and were probably put under extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very solid and were clearly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; some casts of seated Romans show chairs of a thicker and are a kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were brought back within the Classicist time. The klismos design is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be followed as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and artworks has been kept, showing the inside and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing likeness to representations of older chairs.
Like in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair can be designed both with or without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one style, though, the stiles are marginally curved on top of the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a limited ability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose as well) are a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs presumably were kept only for elderly individuals, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decorative parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result 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 on one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself with its shapely 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 of forms—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer examples might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the preference 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 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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