The History of the Chair

From each of the furniture forms, the chair might be the most important. While many other objects (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be said here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further forms like the bench and sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic piece; it was also an indicator of social placement. In the Medieval royal courts there were plain connotations between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior position, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated platform.

In a furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a variety of various makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 lifestyle has designated new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types have been adapted to conform to different human desires. For its close importance with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when used. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be things inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly judged with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the various limbs of the chair are given names corresponding to the elements of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic function of your chair is to support your body, its credit is valued basically on how well it does fulfill this practical role. In the construction of a chair, the builder is limited for certain static legislation and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair builder has large freedom.

The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that created distinctive chair shapes, as seen of the topmost endeavour in the arenas of technique and art. Among such societies, a mention must 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 construct of careful scheme, are today seen from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs crafted as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular construction was crafted. There was in our understanding no noteworthy differentiation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The main difference lied in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made as an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the form continued during much later periods. But the stool then took on the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are worked from wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, can be seen but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient item still around but in a wealth of pictorial objects. The significant kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those would be shown. These unusual legs were thought to have been crafted of bent wood and were in that case had to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely solid and were particularly denoted.

The Romans emulated the Greek style; evidence of casts of seated Romans are chairs of a denser and which appear to be a somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were brought back within the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of sketches and artworks was kept safe, detailing the inside and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing likeness to images of older chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair can be constructed both with and without arms however never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles were lightly curved by the arms so as to fit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). Together, all three sections were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of the back splat later had an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a limited extent reinforce corner joints (and then were loose into the bargain) represent a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved for elderly people, for they were held in great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is believed 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 variation in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been constructed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of 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 is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal 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 them employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more expensive chairs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. 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 occasionally used in place of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour in many 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 well-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 products 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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