The History of the Chair

Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair might be the most imperative. While many other forms (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex makes including a bench and sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic object; it historically was an indicator of social status. Within the old royal courts there were social connotations between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has become a signifier of superior rank, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set floor.

In its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a wealth of variations. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during 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. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our modern lifestyle has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have perfected to fit to differing human requirements. For its close link with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when being used. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is seen best and evaluated with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the individual limbs of the chair have been given names corresponding to the names of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the original job of your chair is to support the body, its worth is tested primarily by how suitably it does fulfill this practical role. In the construction of a chair, the carpenter is restricted for particular static legislation and principal measurements. Under these limitations, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There were civilizations that made unique chair shapes, seen of the foremost work in the arenas of skill and creativity. From such civilisations, 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled scheme, are today seen from tomb discoveries. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs shaped not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular form was crafted. There was in our view no notable difference in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The general difference lied in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted for an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool this kind persevered for much later days. But the stool then was made as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were created of wood. The plain make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, also appeared at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient fossil still extant but as seen from a trove of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those were seen. These unique legs were thought to have been crafted with bent wood and were likely to have been bore huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super stable and were plainly denoted.

The Romans emulated the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans are designs of a heavier and apparently rather less intricately built klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were brought back in the Classicist time. The klismos influence is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special forms of marked uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and paintings was protected, detailing the insides and outside of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting similarity to pictures of ancient chairs.

Just like in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been seen both with or without arms however never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms to sit correctly with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Together, all three parts were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a restricted capability support corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) indicate a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for the senior members of the family, for they were respected greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decorative aspects are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

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

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is displayed in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type 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 innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, 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 unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely 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 was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of relatively thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more expensive chairs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference in several 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 popular 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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