The History of the Chair

From all the furniture objects, the chair may be the most important. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the common sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs such as the bench and 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 obviously defined.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic item; it is also symbolic of social placement. At the old royal courts there were social connotations between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior status, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated platform.

As its furniture purpose, the chair is employed for a number of different forms. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern living has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types have been perfected to match to different human uses. For its particular relationship with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when used. Whereas it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly regarded by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several areas of the chair were given labels corresponding to the parts of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the fundamental purpose of the chair is to support the human body, its credit is valued primarily on how completely it does measure up to this practical job. In the creation of the chair, the carpenter is limited in particular static laws and principal measurements. Under these limits, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair covered an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that had made significant chair types, as expressive of the principal craft in the industries of technique and aesthetics. Out of those peoples, special 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of masterful design, are found from findings made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs structured as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular construction was obtained. There was in our knowledge no marked variation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The main difference lied in the brand of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the stool stayed around during much later periods of time. But the stool then played the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were worked out of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then appeared at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient fossil still extant but as seen in a large amount of pictorial objects. The better recognised 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, only two of these legs can be shown. These curved legs were presumably manufactured out of bent wood and were as such put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely solid and were overtly denoted.

The Romans embued the Greek style; existing statues of seated Romans are chairs of a heavier and which appear to be a kind of more crudely built klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist era. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular types of marked iconicism of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China cannot be traced as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of sketches and works of art has been kept safe, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing likeness to images of previous chairs.

Just like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been constructed both with and without arms however never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles could be lightly curved above the arms in order to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). All three limbs were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose additionally) indicate a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs most likely were kept only for elderly people in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been put together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Works of art display a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the innovation actually originated 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 unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its elegant 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 of styles—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and won favour 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 well-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 versions 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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