The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair may be paramount. While the majority of other forms (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to complex forms for example the bench or sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic artwork; it historically is a signifier of social rank. At the old royal courts there were plain connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. Since the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been iconic of superior rank, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
In a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/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 day living has derived unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms has been adapted to match to evolving human requirements. Because of its unique association with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when being used. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the various limbs of a chair have been given names according to the areas of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious job of your chair is to support your body, its value is valued basically from how completely it fulfills this practical role. Within the design of the chair, the chair maker is restricted by the static law and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covered an epoch of several thousand years. There were societies that had significant chair types, as expressions of the foremost work in the areas of craft and design. Out of those peoples, individual mention can 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled scheme, are today seen from findings made in tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs shaped not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular form was created. There appeared to be no notable difference from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The main variation was in the complex ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed to be an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool this kind continued til much later days. But the stool then was made for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, 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 were made in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were made with wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came up some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient item still existing but as found in a variety of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are displayed. These curved legs were thought to be executed of bent wood and were in that case subjected to extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very strong and were plainly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; designs of statues of seated Romans show evidence of a heavier and in appearance somewhat less delicately designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos design is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special brands of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as well as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and paintings was protected, showing the interior and exteriors of Chinese houses and the furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing similarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was found both with or without arms however never missing a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, though, the stiles were marginally curved over the arms in order to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). All three parts are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of the Chinese back splat later had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (as well as being loose to top that off) represent a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs most likely were reserved only for elderly persons, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decorative elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been put together by either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks show a kind 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 the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interior 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 style of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive 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 is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and found 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 reknowned 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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