The History of the Chair
From all the furniture items, the chair might be the most important. While the majority of other items (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed types such as a bench or sofa, which should be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic craft; it was also a signifier of social hierarchy. At the Medieval royal courts there were clear connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. From the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior dignity, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As its furniture creation, the chair can be used for a wealth of different purposes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs for births (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. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds have changed to conform to growing human requirements. From its unique relationship with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when in employ. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and judged best with a person using it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the several elements of the chair are given names like the names of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal role of the chair is to support our human body, its worth is valued generally by how suitably it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the construction of the chair, the maker is restricted by particular static law and principal measurements. Through these limitations, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an era of several thousand years. There existed societies that have created unique chair shapes, seen of the premier work in the arenas of technique and art. Out of such cultures, particular note must 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 items of careful craft, are known from discoveries made in tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular construction was obtained. There was to our knowledge no particular differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The general variation lied in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed for an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that chair persevered during much later times. But the stool also then was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were worked out of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, is seen but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient object still extant but in a trove of pictorial evidence. The best known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs can be shown. These strange legs were thought to be manufactured from bent wood and were likely to have been put under great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely stable and were particularly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; some models of seated Romans are designs of a denser and are a somewhat more crudely built klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were popularised in the Classicist period. The klismos influence is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of profound iconicism around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of images and artworks was kept, detailing the inside and exteriors of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting similarity to styles of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two standard chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is designed both with and without arms though never without a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, all three sections had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of a back splat exercised an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a particular capability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion 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 way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were kept only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decorative elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been held together with either glue or screws, but have been 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 left its signature on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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 commonly known 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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