The History of the Chair
June 26th, 2010
Of all furniture forms, the chair may be the paramount one. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex makes including the bench and sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic creation; it was also a signifier of social standing. Within the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. From the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen a signifier of superior standing, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a number of variations. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have perfected to conform to changing human desires. For its close importance with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when being used. Although it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly judged with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual limbs of a chair have been given labels corresponding to the elements of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of the chair is to support our body, its worth is valued basically on how completely it does measure up to this practical role. Within the construction of the chair, the chair maker is limited within particular static legislation and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There existed cultures that made individual chair forms, as expressions of the foremost task in the industries of handling and design. Out of such cultures, 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert scheme, are seen from tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs structured as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular form was crafted. There was to our understanding no marked change between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The only change was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was made as an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the form continued until much later points. But the stool then took on the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are worked of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen again somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised 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 iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient object still existing but seen in a wealth of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be seen. These curved legs were likely to be executed out of bent wood and were in that case put under a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely durable and were overtly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; quite a few statues of seated Romans display evidence of a more heavyset and apparently rather crudely built klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular forms of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of sketches and paintings was kept safe, with images of the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are some chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing familiarity to representations of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms in order to fit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). The three areas are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the back splat had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a particular capability support corner joints (and then were loose as a result) indicate a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs probably were reserved for the senior family members, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these furniture items is stylized. The structure and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been joined together with 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 during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art project a design 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 the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant 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 forms—that was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer chairs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 well-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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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