From each of the furniture forms, the chair could be of most importance. While many other forms (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further forms such as a bench and sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic artwork; it can also be a symbol of social ranking. In the historical royal courts there were social differences between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to cope with a stool. Since the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior position, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture form, the chair is used for a number of various makes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have adapted to conform to different human needs. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when used. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly judged with a person using it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the several parts of a chair were given labels according to the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original role of your chair is to support our body, its credit is tested basically for how completely it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the build of a chair, the builder is restricted for particular static laws and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that have created distinctive chair types, expressive of the topmost work in the areas of craft and aesthetics. In those societies, individual mention 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 items of skilled craft, are seen from findings made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular form was obtained. There was in our knowledge no particular differentiation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The simple variation exists in the complexity of ornamentation, in the evidence of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed as an easily stored seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the chair existed during much later periods of time. But the stool then took on the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are worked out of wood. The plain make of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came up at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient item still extant but from a wealth of pictorial material. The most well known is the klismos drawn 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, but only two of them are displayed. These odd legs were understood to have been crafted in bent wood and were therefore subjected to a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very solid and were visibly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; existing casts of seated Romans display examples of a thicker and apparently kind of less delicately built klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were popularised in the Classicist time. The klismos chair is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular forms of marked iconicism within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and works of art has been kept, with images of the inside and outside of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing resemblance to representations of older chairs.
Like in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been seen both with or without arms although always having a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles are delicately curved over the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, the three limbs were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would only to a particular extent embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) signify a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were only for the senior people, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative issues are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of 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 was, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of fairly thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 popularised and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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