From each of the furniture forms, the chair may be the imperative one. While most other items (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be said here in the general sense, from stool to throne to derivative items including the bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic object; it is historically symbolic of social standing. At the past royal courts there were plain signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior position, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a number of various forms. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has designated special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have been adapted to fit to changing human needs. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when used. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and clearly evaluated with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several areas of the chair are labeled corresponding to the elements of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal purpose of the chair is to support a body, its value is valued primarily by how suitably it measures up to this practical role. Within the design of the chair, the builder is bound within certain static legislation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There are societies that have created distinctive chair types, as seen of the topmost task in the spheres of technique and art. From 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of expert scheme, are now a finding from tomb findings. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs structured as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular structure was obtained. There was to all appearances no noteworthy change in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The real change was in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed as an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the chair continued til much later points. But the stool then also played the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be noted, 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 made in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came up at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient specimen still around but as found in a wealth of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be visible. These creative legs were thought to be created out of bent wood and were likely to have been put under a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super stable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; a number of casts of seated Romans offer examples of a heavier and in appearance slightly less delicately built klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special types of marked uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and works of art has been protected, displaying the inside and outer parts of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing resemblance to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been constructed both with and without arms but never missing its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one type, though, the stiles were slightly curved on top of the arms so as to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). All three limbs were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of this back splat had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a limited capability support corner joints (as well as being loose as well) indicate a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were allowed only for older persons in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been put together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, 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 large numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of quite thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket chairs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference in many 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 reknowned 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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