Out of all furniture forms, the chair could be the imperative one. While many other items (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be said here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs such as the bench or sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.
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 aesthetic piece of art; it is historically a signifier of social standing. Within the Medieval royal courts there were social distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. From the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior position, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.
In its furniture construction, the chair can be employed for a wealth of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types has been adapted to fit to differing human desires. Due to its close relationship with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when utilised. Though it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and regarded best with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual areas of a chair have been labeled likened to the limbs of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental work of a chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated primarily by how well it does measure up to this practical job. In the construction of the chair, the carpenter is bound with certain static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that made individual chair types, expressive of the principal endeavour in the arenas of skill and aesthetics. Out of such peoples, individual note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of expert make, were found from findings made in tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs structured similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was obtained. There was in our knowledge no particular difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The general difference lied in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was crafted to be an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool this type stayed around during much later days. But the stool also then existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are created with wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappears some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still in form but in a wealth of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are visible. These strange legs were thought to have been crafted out of bent wood and were likely to have been needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super durable and were particularly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; a number of casts of seated Romans are examples of a heavier and which appear to be a slightly more crudely constructed klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were brought back during the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of profound iconicism of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as far as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and artworks had been preserved, with images of the insides and exteriors of Chinese houses and their furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting likeness to designs of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been seen both with and without arms though always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms in order to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Each of the three areas were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the style of a back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a restricted extent reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose to top that off) are a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were kept only for the senior members of the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has 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 possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative aspects are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been constructed by either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Works of art project a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced 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 type of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious 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 of forms—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of relatively thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer designs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through 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
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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