Of all furniture items, the chair could be paramount. While most of the other forms (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is regarded here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to developed forms like the 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 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/or aesthetic craft; it is also semiotic of social place. In the old royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior standing, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In its furniture creation, the chair encompasses a number of different purposes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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. We can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have changed to conform to different human requirements. Due to its close relationship with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being utilised. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly regarded with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the various parts of the chair were named corresponding to the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple purpose of the chair is to support a human body, its value is tested generally from how completely it does measure up to this practical job. Within the build of a chair, the chair maker is limited in the static regulations and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There existed societies that created significant chair shapes, expressive of the principal object in the spheres of technique and art. Among these civilisations, particular mention 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 upshot of careful craft, were known from findings made in tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped like those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was crafted. There was to our understanding no noteworthy difference from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The only variation lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that chair continued til much later periods. But the stool also was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were made from wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, came again some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient fossil still in form but as seen from a trove of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be displayed. These creative legs were thought to have been manufactured with bent wood and were therefore needed to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; existing statues of seated Romans show chairs of a heavier and which appear to be a somewhat more crudely crafted klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist period. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable individuality in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be traced as far back as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of sketches and artworks had been kept, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese homes and their furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing likeness to images of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair was designed both with and without arms although always having its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it has been found, the stiles had been delicately curved over the arms in order to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Each of the three sections were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of this back splat later had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that just to a restricted capability support corner joints (and furthermore were loose into the bargain) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs most likely were reserved for older individuals, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine 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 was, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of comfort 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of quite thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket chairs might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popular 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
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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