From all the furniture objects, the chair might be the most important. While most other objects (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be looked upon here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces such as the bench or sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic item; it was also semiotic of social place. From the old royal courts there were social signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to cope with a stool. During the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior standing, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture construction, the chair is employed for a number of different purposes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during 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. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types has evolved to match to growing human uses. Because of its unique association with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when in employ. While it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly judged by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the various parts of a chair have been given names like the elements of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic purpose of the chair is to support your body, its value is tested basically for how well it does fulfill this practical job. Within the creation of a chair, the maker is bound by some static regulation and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There are societies that held significant chair forms, expressive of the foremost task in the arenas of handling and art. In these cultures, special note needs to 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 structures of careful design, are today seen from findings made in tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs structured similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular construction was made. There was from our understanding no significant change from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The general variation lied in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed as an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the stool persisted during much later points in time. But the stool also then played the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can today be found, 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 were constructed in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are made with wood. The easy make of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, appeared some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient item still around but as in a wealth of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which could be visible. These strange legs were most likely to have been manufactured from bent wood and were probably bore extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very strong and were visibly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; some models of seated Romans display designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some forms of notable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be traced as far as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and works of art had been preserved, with images of the insides and exteriors of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting likeness to designs of older chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, though, the stiles were delicately curved on top of the arms to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Together, all three areas had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of the Chinese back splat then had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top it off) represent a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were only for older persons, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been adjoined by either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be seen in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive 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 was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour 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 well-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 styles 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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