The History of the Chair

June 26th, 2010

From each of the furniture items, the chair could be the imperative one. While most of the other pieces (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be said here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative items including a bench or sofa, which can 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 intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic object; it was historically an indicator of social hierarchy. In the Medieval royal courts there were clear connotations between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. From the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as iconic of superior status, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher platform.

In its furniture creation, the chair can be used for a wealth of different models. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern day living has designated new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types have changed to fit to different human uses. From its significant relationship with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when being used. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and regarded best with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various elements of a chair have been named likened to the names of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elemental purpose of your chair is to support a human body, its worth is valued principally by how completely it fulfills this practical role. In the build of a chair, the builder is bound within certain static legislation and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.

The history of the chair covered a period of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that had significant chair forms, expressions of the premier endeavour in the industries of skill and aesthetics. Out of those societies, a 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of masterful scheme, were seen from findings made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs designed similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular construction was created. There was apparently no marked differentiation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The general variation exists in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was made for an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool that type continued for much later periods. But the stool then was made for the role of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be observed, 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 constructed in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed from wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was then seen at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of those is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient specimen still in form but as found in a large amount of pictorial material. The archetype is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which would be shown. These odd legs were possibly crafted out of bent wood and were in that case needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely strong and were overtly pointed out.

The Romans emulated the Greek designs; some models of seated Romans are evidence of a thicker and which appear to be a slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular types of notable originality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be charted as far back as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and paintings had been kept safe, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting likeness to styles of past chairs.

Just like in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with and without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms so as to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). Together, all three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of a back splat later had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a limited capability reinforce corner joints (and are loose as a result) indicate a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved for the senior persons in the family, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto 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 mark on the chair. Paintings display 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 between the layers, stitched to show up 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 when traveling which, in the same era, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant proportions and fine 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 was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used as an alternative to 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 premier 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
Within 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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