The History of the Chair

From all the furniture pieces, the chair could be of the most importance. While the majority of other items (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to further items including a bench and 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 distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it historically was symbolic of social hierarchy. At the old royal courts there were clear distinctions between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior standing, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.

In its furniture form, the chair can be used for a range of different forms. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern living has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types have been changed to fit to different human uses. From its close link with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when being utilised. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly regarded by a person using it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several limbs of a chair are labeled as the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elementary purpose of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated principally by how well it does fulfill this practical job. In the creation of a chair, the maker is limited with certain static legislation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair covered a period of several thousand years. There are cultures that created iconic chair forms, seen of the foremost object in the areas of skill and creativity. Among these such societies, particular 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 objects of masterful craft, were known from tomb findings. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs formed akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular construction was created. There seemed to be no noteworthy change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The simple variation exists in the complexity of ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted to be an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool that form stayed til much later periods. But the stool then was made for the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be noted, 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 form of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed out of wood. The plain build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient specimen still existing but as found in a variety of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs were visible. These strange legs were presumed to have been crafted out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super solid and were plainly indicated.

The Romans embued the Greek designs; quite a few models of seated Romans offer evidence of a heavier and are a rather crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist era. The klismos chair is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of notable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t 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 unscathed folio of images and paintings was protected, showing the inside and exterior of Chinese homes and their furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.

Just like in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair was seen both with or without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, however, the stiles were slightly curved by the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). All three sections were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the style of the back splat then had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (and were loose to top it off) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs probably were kept only for older people, for they were esteemed greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very 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 by a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The construction and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been held together with either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered 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—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are 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 employ wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer items may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite 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
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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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