Out of all furniture needs, the chair could be the imperative one. While most of the other objects (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further types including the bench and sofa, which should be seen 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 intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic item; it is historically semiotic of social place. At the old royal courts there were clear distinctions between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior rank, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a variety of various models. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have been evolved to match to differing human desires. From its particular association with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when in employ. While 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 really understood and fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the various limbs of a chair are given names as the elements of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original purpose of a chair is to support our human body, its worth is valued generally for how fully it measures up to this practical use. Within the design of a chair, the builder is limited with some static law and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There were civilizations that had made iconic chair forms, expressions of the foremost work in the arenas of handling and aesthetics. Among those 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled make, were seen from tomb discoveries. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs structured akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular form was crafted. There appears to be no particular variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The general change exists in the type of ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted as an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool that stool continued til much later days. But the stool then also was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were worked from wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still extant but found in a large amount of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were visible. These unique legs were likely to have been crafted from bent wood and were in that case subjected to a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very solid and were overtly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; designs of casts of seated Romans offer designs of a thicker and in appearance rather less intricately crafted klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some kinds of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of sketches and paintings was protected, with images of the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting resemblance to images of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair was constructed both with and without arms however always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one image, however, the stiles had been marginally curved over the arms to sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Together, all three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of this back splat later had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would only to a limited ability stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose to top that off) indicate an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were reserved only for senior family members, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but were mortised with 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 mark on the chair. Artworks project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of the inside of rich 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 can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and won favour in several 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
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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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