Of all furniture pieces, the chair may be the imperative one. While most other items (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to further forms including a bench or sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic piece of art; it can also be a symbol of social rank. At the historical royal courts there were significant differences between possessing 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 and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior dignity, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher platform.
As a furniture construction, the chair encompasses a variety of various forms. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has been adapted to suit to differing human requirements. Due to its unique relationship with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when in employ. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged best with a person using it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several elements of the chair have been labeled likened to the parts of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic job of your chair is to support a human body, its worth is tested basically from how completely it does fulfill this practical use. Within the design of a chair, the builder is restricted under certain static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these restrictions, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair extends over dates of several thousand years. There are peoples that had distinctive chair shapes, as expressive of the leading object in the arenas of craft and aesthetics. From these such civilisations, particular note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful scheme, are now a finding from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs structured as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular construction was obtained. There was to our understanding no noteworthy change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The main difference was in the complexity of ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this type stayed til much later points. But the stool also then was created for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can today be found, 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 structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are made from wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, can be seen at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still extant but as in a variety of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which would be visible. These curved legs were probably created out of bent wood and were as such put under great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely solid and were particularly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; a number of casts of seated Romans display evidence of a more heavyset and which appear to be a rather more crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist time. The klismos design is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of considerable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be traced as far as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of images and paintings had been kept, showing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing similarity to images of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair is found both with and without arms however always having the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one design, however, the stiles were lightly curved over the arms so as to sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Together, the three parts are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the style of a back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a restricted capability reinforce corner joints (and then are loose in the bargain) indicate a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved for the senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come 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 fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been held together by either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be found in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style 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 of forms—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of quite thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket examples may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 popularised 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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