The History of the Chair
June 26th, 2010
Of all furniture needs, the chair might be of the most importance. While the majority of other forms (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex makes like the bench and sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic object; it was also an indicator of social rank. From the past royal courts there were clear signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to squat on a stool. During the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a number of various models. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms have been evolved to fit to differing human desires. For its particular relationship with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when in employ. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly tested with a person using it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various parts of a chair were given names likened to the limbs of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic job of a chair is to support your body, its worth is evaluated basically for how fully it does fulfill this practical role. Within the structure of the chair, the carpenter is restricted for the static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that made significant chair forms, as expressive of the premier endeavour in the spheres of technique and design. In these such civilisations, a mention needs to 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 objects of masterful craft, are now a finding from findings made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs crafted like those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular construction was created. There was to our understanding no significant change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The general change lied in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted as an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that form stayed during much later days. But the stool also then took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are created with wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, was seen again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient object still around but as seen from a wealth of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be visible. These strange legs were likely to have been executed in bent wood and were thus had to bear huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely solid and were particularly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; designs of statues of seated Romans display designs of a more heavyset and apparently somewhat less intricately designed klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were brought back in the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable individuality of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and paintings has been protected, with images of the insides and outside of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing likeness to representations of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is seen both with and without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles are slightly curved on top of the arms so as to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). Each of the three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of this back splat then had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a restricted ability reinforce corner joints (and were loose into the bargain) represent a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs probably were kept for senior members of the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not look to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of the interiors 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 kind of chair might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly 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 whole row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated 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 found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 popularised 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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