Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be the imperative one. While most of the other pieces (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative types for example a bench and sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic craft; it was also a signifier of social standing. At the old royal courts there were plain signifiers between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to use a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior dignity, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In a furniture construction, the chair ranges from a range of variations. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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 can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have changed to fit to differing human uses. Due to its unique relationship with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when being used. While it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen and regarded best with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the individual parts of the chair were given labels likened to the limbs of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear job of a chair is to support the body, its credit is valued basically for how completely it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the structure of a chair, the chair maker is bound within the static regulation and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair extends over dates of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that had made iconic chair forms, as expressions of the foremost task in the areas of technique and design. In these civilisations, 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 construct of skilled design, are now known from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted like those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular structure was created. There was from our understanding no notable variation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The real change was in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted to be an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool this stool persisted til much later points. But the stool then was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were created of wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappears somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient specimen still existing but in a large amount of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be seen. These odd legs were most likely to be created from bent wood and were likely to have been needed to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very solid and were clearly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek style; a number of statues of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and which appear to be a slightly crudely constructed klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist era. The klismos influence is used in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special forms of marked originality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be tracked as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and paintings had been kept, displaying the inside and outside of Chinese households and the furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing likeness to styles of previous chairs.
Like in Egypt, two chair designs dominated in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been constructed both with or without arms but never without its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles had been slightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). Together, the three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and were loose into the bargain) represent a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved for older persons, for they were held in 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 or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been constructed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into position 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. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same era, held 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 inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, 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 clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits 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 little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of rather thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 popular 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 brands 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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