Out of all furniture pieces, the chair could be the imperative one. While most of the other forms (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be regarded here in the common sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms such as the bench or sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic piece of art; it is also semiotic of social place. At the old royal courts there were clear connotations between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to make do with a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior dignity, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a variety of various models. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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 make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have been changed to conform to growing human needs. For its unique relationship with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when in use. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various limbs of a chair have been named like the limbs of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious role of the chair is to support the body, its worth is valued basically on how fully it does measure up to this practical function. Within the manufacture of a chair, the carpenter is limited for the static laws and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There were cultures that created unique chair shapes, expressive of the principal task in the arenas of technique and art. Within these peoples, special note should 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 objects of masterful design, are now found from discoveries made in tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular form was crafted. There was in our understanding no significant differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The only difference exists in the complexity of ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was made to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that form stayed around until much later points in time. But the stool also then was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can now be seen, 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 were in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were worked out of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappears but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient item still extant but as found in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are shown. These unusual legs were thought to be executed of bent wood and were thus had to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were particularly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek design; some casts of seated Romans display evidence of a more heavyset and which appear to be a slightly less intricately designed klismos. Both features, light and heavy, were revived within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be traced as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and paintings was preserved, displaying the interiors and outside of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing familiarity to styles of older chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair is designed both with or without arms though always with its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, though, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms in order to fit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Each of the three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the Chinese back splat had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a limited ability reinforce corner joints (and are loose as a result) signify a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved for senior individuals in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been put together by either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and fixed in its 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. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny 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 kind of chair is found in engravings of the inside of affluent 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 may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of fairly thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 commonly 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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