Of all furniture forms, the chair may be of the most importance. While the majority of other forms (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to derivative items such as a bench or sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic craft; it historically was symbolic of social hierarchy. In the past royal courts there were clear distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to utilise a stool. From the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become iconic of superior dignity, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture construction, the chair ranges from a range of different makes. There are chairs manufactured 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). During past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has been adapted to suit to evolving human requirements. Because of its unique connection with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when being used. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and judged best by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the individual parts of the chair have been named as the limbs of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary job of the chair is to support our body, its credit is tested generally by how fully it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of a chair, the maker is limited within particular static rules and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There existed peoples that held individual chair forms, as expressive of the highest craft in the industries of craft and aesthetics. From these such cultures, a 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of expert craft, were seen from discoveries made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs structured similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular construction was obtained. There appeared to be no particular change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The general change lies in the complex ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed to be an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool this form persevered until much later periods of time. But the stool also then took on the character of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were worked out of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, also appeared but some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient fossil still in form but from a large amount of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are seen. These curving legs were understood to have been manufactured with bent wood and were probably bore a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super durable and were visibly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; evidence of models of seated Romans offer designs of a denser and apparently slightly less intricately crafted klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist time. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of considerable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of drawings and artworks was protected, with images of the interior and outside of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are some chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing similarity to styles of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles are delicately curved above the arms in order to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). The three parts are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a restricted capability embolden corner joints (and then were loose in the result) indicate an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were reserved for older members of the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings display a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is found in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate 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—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and finer chairs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 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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