The History of the Chair

From each of the furniture needs, the chair might be the imperative one. While many other items (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to complex types for example the bench or sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic artwork; it historically is symbolic of social hierarchy. Within the Medieval royal courts there were significant distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to make do with a stool. During the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior rank, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised floor.

In a furniture purpose, the chair can be employed for a number of various purposes. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/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 modern lifestyle has developed new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds has adapted to fit to changing human requirements. For its close connection with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when in employ. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are items inside or not, a chair is seen best and judged best by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter need the other. Thus the different elements of the chair are labeled as the limbs of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the principal work of a chair is to support our human body, its worth is tested principally by how well it fulfills this practical function. In the creation of the chair, the maker is bound for certain static laws and principal measurements. Through these limitations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that held distinctive chair shapes, as expressions of the topmost object in the areas of craft and creativity. Out of such societies, individual mention needs to 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of expert craft, are today known from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was created. There was to our knowledge no particular variation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The general change was in the complexity of ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed as an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that form continued for much later periods. But the stool then was made as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are created from wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was then seen at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient object still in form but in a variety of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs would be visible. These curved legs were considered to have been crafted from bent wood and were probably put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely solid and were visibly denoted.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; evidence of casts of seated Romans are examples of a thicker and in appearance rather less delicately crafted klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were popularised in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special types of considerable individuality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of drawings and paintings has been kept, displaying the interiors and exteriors of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing similarity to designs of past chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be seen both with or without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one design, however, the stiles were marginally curved over the arms to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Each of the three areas were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of a back splat had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a limited extent reinforce corner joints (and then are loose as a result) indicate a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs presumably were only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The structure and decorative parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been constructed by either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is found in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine 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 in the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of fairly thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more expensive chairs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 popularised 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 products 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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