From all the furniture forms, the chair could be paramount. While the majority of other objects (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be looked upon here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to further items for example 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 labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic piece; it is historically symbolic of social place. At the past royal courts there were important connotations between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture form, the chair is employed for a number of various models. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have been evolved to suit to different human desires. From its significant link with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when being utilised. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and tested with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the various areas of the chair were named as the areas of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear job of a chair is to support our body, its worth is judged primarily for how well it does measure up to this practical use. Within the build of the chair, the carpenter is restricted by some static rules and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an era of several thousand years. There existed societies that had iconic chair types, expressions of the leading task in the industries of craft and art. Among those societies, special 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 items of careful design, are now found from tomb findings. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs structured like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular construction was made. There appeared to be no particular change between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The general difference lied in the level of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured as an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool the kind continued until much later points in time. But the stool also was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be observed, 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 are made in the form of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were made of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still around but in a large amount of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be visible. These unusual legs were presumed to be executed of bent wood and were as such subjected to a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super stable and were plainly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; designs of models of seated Romans offer chairs of a heavier and which appear to be a slightly less intricately crafted klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were seen again during the Classicist era. The klismos influence is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be traced as long as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and artworks was protected, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting similarity to pictures of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be found both with or without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms so as to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three parts are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a restricted extent support corner joints (and were loose to top it off) signify an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. 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 collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs most likely were kept for older people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and fixed in its 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 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 in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same period, granted 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 the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and 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 critical acclaim, it is not held that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant 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, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made 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 of those are constructed from wood of quite thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popularised 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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