The History of the Chair

Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair might be of most importance. While many other items (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to complex items such as a bench or sofa, which should 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 intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or an aesthetic craft; it was also a signifier of social status. In the old royal courts there were clear distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior dignity, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set platform.

As a furniture form, the chair encompasses a wealth of variations. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern day living has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes has perfected to suit to differing human needs. Because of its close connection with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when in use. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different limbs of a chair were labeled according to the parts of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the obvious work of the chair is to support your body, its value is valued firstly on how completely it fulfills this practical function. In the creation of the chair, the designer is limited within particular static regulations and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair is an epoch of several thousand years. There are cultures that had unique chair shapes, as seen of the leading object in the areas of skill and aesthetics. In such societies, individual mention 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled scheme, are today seen from tomb findings. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs structured similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was obtained. There appears to be no particular change between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The simple difference lied in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted as an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool the form existed until much later points in time. But the stool also then was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be noted, 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 in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were worked from wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappeared somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient object still around but from a large amount of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of 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 were visible. These curved legs were presumably created with bent wood and were therefore bore great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely solid and were plainly denoted.

The Romans emulated the Greek design; designs of models of seated Romans show chairs of a heavier and which appear to be a rather more crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some forms of considerable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and works of art had been kept, detailing the insides and outer parts of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a collection of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing similarity to styles of ancient chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is designed both with or without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles had been delicately curved by the arms in order to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). All three areas are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of this back splat later had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a particular capability reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose into the bargain) signify a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs presumably were allowed only for older members of the family, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not look to have been held together with either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in 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 little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 popularised 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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