The History of the Chair

From all the furniture items, the chair might be the imperative one. While the majority of other pieces (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the general sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs such as a bench or sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it historically is a symbol of social placement. Within the old royal courts there were clear differences between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. In the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised level.

As a furniture purpose, the chair can be utilised for a number of different purposes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern living has designated special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have changed to match to growing human requirements. Because of its unique importance with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when used. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and judged by a person using it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the individual areas of the chair have been named corresponding to the limbs of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the original purpose of a chair is to support the body, its credit is valued basically by how fully it does measure up to this practical job. In the creation of the chair, the designer is bound by the static law and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair designer has large freedom.

The history of the chair is an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that created iconic chair shapes, as expressive of the topmost task in the spheres of craft and creativity. Within those cultures, individual mention can 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful scheme, were found from tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular construction was obtained. There was apparently no marked difference in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The general difference lied in the level of ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed to be an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that type stayed during much later periods. But the stool also was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be noted, 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 were in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were worked from wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still extant but as in a large amount of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are seen. These curved legs were presumed to have been manufactured with bent wood and were therefore had a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely solid and were overtly denoted.

The Romans adopted the Greek design; a number of casts of seated Romans display chairs of a more heavyset and are a kind of less intricately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were popularised during the Classicist time. The klismos design can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and works of art was kept safe, with images of the inside and exterior of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing resemblance to pictures of older chairs.

Just the same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it has been seen, the stiles had been marginally curved over the arms for the purpose of suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). The three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a restricted limit reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose as well) signify a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were kept only for senior people in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The construction and aesthetic parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interior of wealthy 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 can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically 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 cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of quite thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 reknowned 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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