From all the furniture items, the chair may be paramount. While the majority of other pieces (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to complex types 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 evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic object; it is historically a symbol of social ranking. From the Medieval royal courts there were clear distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior rank, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be employed for a range of various purposes. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has been perfected to fit to evolving human uses. Because of its significant importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when used. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and judged with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the several parts of a chair were named like the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious role of the chair is to support the body, its value is valued principally from how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the construction of a chair, the designer is bound in particular static legislation and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There are peoples that had made unique chair forms, as expressive of the leading work in the industries of handling and art. Among these peoples, particular note 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 structures of skilled design, are today a finding from discoveries made in tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular structure was made. There seems to be no marked differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The only change existed in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was manufactured to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool the form existed during much later periods of time. But the stool also existed in the use of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be seen, 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 are made in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappeared somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient fossil still around but in a trove of pictorial items. The iconic kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be visible. These curved legs were presumed to be manufactured from bent wood and were therefore needed to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very strong and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; existing statues of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and which appear to be a kind of less intricately designed klismos. Both designs, the light and the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of marked individuality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as well as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and artworks has been kept, displaying the interior and outer parts of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing resemblance to styles of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be found both with or without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one image, though, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms in order to conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Each of the three limbs had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the Chinese back splat had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a particular limit support corner joints (and were loose additionally) represent a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were only for elderly people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is found 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. Though this kind of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious 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 of forms—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of rather thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more upmarket chairs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popularised 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
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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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