Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be the paramount one. While most of the other forms (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces like the bench and sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic object; it historically is a symbol of social hierarchy. From the Medieval royal courts there were significant signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. Since the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior standing, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In a furniture form, the chair ranges from a wealth of different models. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds have changed to fit to differing human uses. Because of its significant association with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when used. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different elements of a chair have been given labels likened to the areas of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of your chair is to support a body, its value is judged firstly on how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. In the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is bound by certain static law and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that held unique chair types, expressive of the premier craft in the spheres of handling and design. Out of these civilisations, special mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled design, are known from findings made in tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted like those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular design was made. There was to our knowledge no significant difference between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The general variation existed in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this type continued during much later points in time. But the stool also then was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are made with wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappeared but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still extant but as found in a variety of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs are shown. These creative legs were presumably executed in bent wood and were thus put under great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very durable and were particularly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; a number of statues of seated Romans are examples of a heavier and are a somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were popularised during the Classicist era. The klismos style is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some forms of considerable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be traced as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of sketches and artworks has been preserved, detailing the inside and exterior of Chinese homes and the furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing resemblance to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair is seen both with or without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, it has been found, the stiles had been marginally curved by the arms in order to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). The three areas had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of this back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a particular ability embolden corner joints (and are loose as well) represent a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were kept for elderly people, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Artworks project a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be seen in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were 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 crafted in impressive numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by 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 of forms—that was, as progressed 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 relaxation and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved 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 of those are made from wood of quite thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer chairs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood could 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 as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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