The History of the Chair

From all the furniture items, the chair could be of most importance. While most other items (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex types for example the bench or 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 clearly labeled.

The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic object; it is historically a signifier of social standing. At the historical royal courts there were significant signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior status, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised floor.

As its furniture form, the chair is employed for a variety of variations. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have been adapted to fit to evolving human desires. Because of its unique relationship with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when utilised. Though it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and regarded best by a person using it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the several elements of the chair are labeled as the parts of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elemental purpose of a chair is to support your body, its credit is evaluated firstly on how suitably it measures up to this practical use. In the structure of the chair, the builder is bound by certain static regulations and principal measurements. In these boundaries, however, the chair creator has large freedom.

The history of the chair is a period of several thousand years. There were societies that made significant chair shapes, as expressive of the topmost task in the arenas of craft and design. Within such societies, a 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful scheme, are today a finding from tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed like those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular construction was obtained. There was in our view no marked differentiation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The main difference existed in the type of ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool the stool stayed around during much later periods. But the stool also was designed as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are worked with wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was seen again but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this type is the folding stool, of 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 object still around but as seen from a large amount of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which are displayed. These unique legs were most likely to have been crafted out of bent wood and were therefore bore extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super stable and were overtly signified.

The Romans adopted the Greek design; quite a few casts of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and apparently slightly more crudely crafted klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were revived in the Classicist era. The klismos design is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of marked individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as long as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of sketches and paintings was kept safe, showing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting likeness to styles of ancient chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be found both with and without arms although always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, though, the stiles are lightly curved by the arms so as to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Each of the three areas are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat later had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a particular limit stabilise corner joints (and are loose additionally) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were only for the senior people in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity 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 possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration issues are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Paintings display a type of chair with a relatively crude 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 small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be found in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself with its elegant proportions and delicate 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, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour 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 commonly known and was widely distributed throughout the world.

Late 18th to 20th century
During 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 versions 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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