From each of the furniture items, the chair may be the paramount one. While most other objects (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair was regarded here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs including the bench and sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic piece of art; it is also semiotic of social ranking. Within the historical royal courts there were clear signifiers between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been an indicator of superior dignity, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In its furniture purpose, the chair can be employed for a range of different forms. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types have been perfected to match to differing human desires. For its particular link with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in use. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and regarded best by a person using it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various limbs of the chair have been given labels according to the elements of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of your chair is to support a body, its worth is evaluated primarily on how suitably it measures up to this practical use. Within the creation of a chair, the maker is restricted for the static laws and principal measurements. Inside these restrictions, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that had made iconic chair types, expressions of the premier endeavour in the industries of skill and creativity. Among such societies, special note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert scheme, are today a finding from tomb findings. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs structured not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular construction was obtained. There appears to be no marked difference between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The main change lied in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created to be an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that kind existed during much later points. But the stool also was created for the task of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today 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 made in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are formed with wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, was then seen but some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient item still extant but as found in a variety of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which would be shown. These strange legs were possibly created in bent wood and were therefore put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely stable and were visibly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; designs of casts of seated Romans display examples of a denser and apparently kind of more crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some types of profound individuality around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and paintings was preserved, detailing the inside and outside of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to styles of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is constructed both with or without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles had been slightly curved over the arms for the purpose of conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Together, all three parts were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a limited capability stabilise corner joints (and are loose as a result) are a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were kept for the senior persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative elements are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed together by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, gave 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 rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant 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 style—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of fairly thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner 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
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 versions 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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