The History of the Chair

From each of the furniture forms, the chair may be of most importance. While many other pieces (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed forms including the bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic piece; it was historically semiotic of social placement. At the historical royal courts there were important signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior status, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.

As a furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a wealth of variations. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our lifestyle has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has been perfected to suit to growing human needs. Due to its particular association with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when in use. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly regarded with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the various areas of a chair are given labels as the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic work of the chair is to support your body, its value is evaluated primarily on how fully it measures up to this practical function. Within the build of the chair, the maker is restricted by particular static regulations and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair was dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that made individual chair forms, as expressive of the highest object in the industries of skill and aesthetics. From these such cultures, 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 construct of skilled design, are today seen from discoveries made in tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs crafted not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular form was crafted. There was in our view no significant variation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The general variation lied in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed to be an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool this stool persisted for much later points in time. But the stool then was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be observed, 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 are in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were worked from wood. The simple make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, can be seen some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient fossil still existing but as seen in a large amount of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which can be seen. These odd legs were understood to have been crafted with bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super solid and were visibly drawn.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; some casts of seated Romans offer chairs of a thicker and in appearance rather less intricately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were seen again during the Classicist period. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special forms of profound originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as far back as in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and paintings has been preserved, with images of the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing resemblance to images of past chairs.

As in Egypt, there were two standard chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair was found both with and without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles had been delicately curved by the arms so as to suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its back). Together, all three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of a back splat then had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a particular ability stabilise corner joints (and were loose to top it off) signify a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs most likely were kept for older family members, for they were held in great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decoration parts are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively unrefined 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 little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside 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 may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 forms—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically 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 constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of fairly thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket examples can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won 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 commonly known 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 styles 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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