Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair could be of most importance. While most other objects (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms including a bench and sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it historically is an indicator of social rank. Within the past royal courts there were plain distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to cope with a stool. In the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior position, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In a furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a range of different models. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types has adapted to suit to different human needs. From its particular relationship with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when used. Although it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is seen best and evaluated by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various elements of the chair have been named as the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original work of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is valued generally from how suitably it measures up to this practical function. Within the construction of a chair, the designer is limited within some static regulations and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that had iconic chair types, as seen of the principal work in the spheres of skill and creativity. Out of these such peoples, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled design, are known from tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was obtained. There appears to be no noteworthy difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The only change exists in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was manufactured for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that type continued for much later points in time. But the stool then was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are formed with wood. The plain make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came again somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this kind is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still in form but from a variety of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be displayed. These unusual legs were understood to be created from bent wood and were thus had huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very solid and were overtly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans display examples of a denser and are a slightly less intricately crafted klismos. Both features, the light or the heavy, were popularised during the Classicist period. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special forms of profound originality within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be charted as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of images and works of art has been kept, with images of the interiors and outside of Chinese homes and their furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing likeness to representations of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair is constructed both with and without arms although always having a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one design, though, the stiles are delicately curved on top of the arms to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three limbs had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of this back splat then had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a particular limit support corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the bargain) signify an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were reserved only for elderly family members, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings display a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same era, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is displayed 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. Though this kind of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine 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 created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and won favour in many 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 commonly 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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