Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be of most importance. While most of the other items (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex types such as a 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 defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic artwork; it historically was a symbol of social standing. At the past royal courts there were plain distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. In the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become iconic of superior rank, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As its furniture form, the chair encompasses a wealth of various makes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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.
Modern living has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes have adapted to match to different human needs. Because of its particular relationship with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when utilised. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly evaluated with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the several parts of the chair are given names like the limbs of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original function of your chair is to support our body, its value is judged primarily on how suitably it measures up to this practical job. In the design of the chair, the carpenter is bound for particular static regulations and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There were societies that had iconic chair shapes, as expressive of the leading work in the industries of craft and aesthetics. Within these peoples, individual 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert make, were a finding from findings made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs designed like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was created. There was in our understanding no particular difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The simple variation existed in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed for an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this form stayed around til much later periods. But the stool also was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, 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 constructed in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient item still in form but from a variety of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those could be visible. These creative legs were thought to be crafted out of bent wood and were in that case had to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very strong and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; designs of models of seated Romans display evidence of a heavier and are a rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were popularised during the Classicist period. The klismos chair is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of images and artworks had been kept, detailing the interior and outside of Chinese houses and the furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting familiarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been constructed both with and without arms but never missing a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms so as to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Each of the three sections had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the back splat had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a restricted capability support corner joints (and then are loose as well) are a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs probably were kept only for senior persons in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come 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 elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not look to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate 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 progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more expensive examples may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and found 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
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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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