The History of the Chair
From all the furniture objects, the chair might be of most importance. While the majority of other pieces (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to further forms 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 obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic creation; it is also a symbol of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were plain distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. In the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become iconic of superior standing, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a range of various models. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds has evolved to match to changing human needs. From its unique association with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in employ. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and clearly evaluated with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various limbs of the chair have been labeled like the names of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental work of a chair is to support your body, its value is valued basically from how well it measures up to this practical role. Within the creation of a chair, the carpenter is restricted under particular static laws and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There are societies that had made individual chair types, as seen of the principal object in the arenas of handling and aesthetics. In such cultures, 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 construct of masterful design, are seen from tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular design was created. There was from our knowledge no marked differentiation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The simple change exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created for an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this kind continued for much later days. But the stool also then existed in the role of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are worked from wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappeared at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known 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 typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient item still in form but as seen from a wealth of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs were displayed. These strange legs were most likely to be created with bent wood and were in that case bore huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very solid and were overtly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; evidence of statues of seated Romans are examples of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist era. The klismos style can be seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special kinds of notable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of sketches and paintings was preserved, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing familiarity to representations of older chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is found both with and without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). The three parts were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and are loose to top that off) indicate a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved for older family members, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly affixed 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 perspective the ultimate effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decorative aspects are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been held together with either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Artworks project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as developed 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 relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and allows 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of rather thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more expensive examples may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour 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
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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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