Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair could be the paramount one. While the majority of other pieces (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further items such as the bench or 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 clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic item; it is also a signifier of social placement. In the historical royal courts there were important differences between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to sit on a stool. In the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior standing, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As a furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a range of different makes. 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 past there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We 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 kinds have adapted to fit to different human desires. For its particular relationship with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when in employ. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual limbs of the chair have been given names as the areas of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary purpose of a chair is to support a body, its value is judged firstly by how completely it fulfills this practical function. Within the build of a chair, the builder is bound for certain static laws and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that created unique chair shapes, as expressive of the leading endeavour in the areas of technique and art. From those peoples, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of careful make, are a finding from findings made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular structure was obtained. There seems to be no marked differentiation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The main change lied in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made for an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool that type persisted until much later points. But the stool then was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were formed out of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappeared but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient item still in form but seen in a wealth of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them can be shown. These curving legs were thought to have been crafted from bent wood and were in that case had to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely durable and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; quite a few casts of seated Romans show examples of a denser and are a somewhat less intricately built klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special brands of considerable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and paintings was kept safe, detailing the interiors and outside of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting resemblance to pictures of previous chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two major chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be found both with or without arms but never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, however, the stiles were marginally curved by the arms so as to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). All three areas are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a particular limit reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) represent a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were kept only for older individuals in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but had been 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 had its name on the chair. Paintings project a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found 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. Though this style of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable numbers, as surmisable 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 expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 popular 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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