From each of the furniture needs, the chair might be the most imperative. While most of the other objects (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative types like the bench or sofa, which might be looked upon 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 intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic piece; it is also an indicator of social placement. At the old royal courts there were social differences 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. In the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior status, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture creation, the chair holds a number of different makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types has been changed to match to growing human uses. Due to its close association with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being used. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and evaluated by a person using it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the various areas of the chair have been given names like the parts of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original purpose of the chair is to support the human body, its value is evaluated principally by how completely it does fulfill this practical role. In the build of a chair, the maker is limited by particular static legislation and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers dates of several thousand years. There existed peoples that held individual chair shapes, as expressive of the premier endeavour in the spheres of technique and creativity. Among these such cultures, individual note 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of expert craft, are now a finding from tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs shaped as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was obtained. There seems to be no marked differentiation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The simple variation lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed for an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool the type existed for much later points in time. But the stool then also was designed for the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are made of wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then appeared somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient specimen still extant but in a variety of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be seen. These unique legs were possibly crafted from bent wood and were thus bore great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were plainly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans display examples of a denser and are a kind of more crudely built klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular brands of profound originality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as long as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and paintings had been preserved, with images of the inside and outside of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing familiarity to images of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair was constructed both with or without arms although never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, however, the stiles are marginally curved by the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Together, all three sections had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat exercised an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a limited capability stabilise corner joints (and then are loose additionally) indicate a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for senior persons in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration parts are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been adjoined by either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art project 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, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in 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 is displayed in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of 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 is, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer examples might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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