The History of the Chair

Of all furniture pieces, the chair might be the most important. While the majority of other pieces (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to further kinds including a bench and sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic piece; it can also be semiotic of social hierarchy. In the past royal courts there were clear connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. From the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior standing, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated level.

As its furniture creation, the chair is employed for a number of various models. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our modern lifestyle has demanded unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have been evolved to suit to differing human requirements. For its unique link with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when utilised. While it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and regarded best by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several limbs of the chair have been named according to the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic work of your chair is to support our body, its value is valued generally for how suitably it does fulfill this practical role. In the manufacture of a chair, the designer is limited for particular static regulations and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair covered an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that held significant chair types, seen of the topmost craft in the spheres of handling and aesthetics. Out of these civilisations, special 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful make, are today seen from discoveries made in tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular structure was made. There was from our knowledge no notable variation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The general change lies in the complexity of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted to be an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool the form continued for much later periods of time. But the stool also was made as the task of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be noted, 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 were made in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are made of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then appeared but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient object still around but as seen in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be visible. These unique legs were considered to have been executed in bent wood and were in that case needed to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely stable and were visibly signified.

The Romans emulated the Greek chair; evidence of models of seated Romans show evidence of a heavier and are a rather less delicately constructed klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist period. The klismos design is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of marked iconicism around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as long as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and artworks was kept, with images of the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting resemblance to representations of ancient chairs.

Same as in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles are marginally curved above the arms to sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). All three sections had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of this back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (as well as being loose to top it off) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were kept only for senior persons, for they were esteemed greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and aesthetic parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings project a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found 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. While this kind of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely proportions and expensive 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—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of leisure 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 small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer examples can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the preference 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 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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