Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair may be of the most importance. While many other items (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be used here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex forms including the bench and sofa, which might be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic object; it historically was an indicator of social rank. From the old royal courts there were important distinctions between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior standing, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As a furniture construction, the chair can be employed for a wealth of different models. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or 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 derived special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types has been perfected to fit to different human needs. Due to its close relationship with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when in use. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the different parts of a chair have been labeled like the areas of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal job of a chair is to support a human body, its credit is evaluated firstly by how well it does fulfill this practical role. Within the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is limited for some static laws and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over a period of several thousand years. There existed societies that created individual chair forms, as expressive of the foremost object in the areas of craft and aesthetics. In such societies, individual note should 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 make, were a finding from findings made in tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was made. There was to our understanding no particular differentiation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The main change lied in the complexity of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was designed for an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this stool existed during much later periods of time. But the stool then was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be noted, 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 are made in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are made out of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, can be seen somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient fossil still around but seen in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The most well known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which would be shown. These curving legs were possibly executed from bent wood and were therefore subjected to extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very solid and were clearly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; quite a few statues of seated Romans show evidence of a thicker and are a somewhat more crudely crafted klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were popularised in the Classicist time. The klismos chair is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular types of notable iconicism around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and works of art was kept, detailing the insides and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing resemblance to pictures of past chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two major chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been found both with or without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, though, the stiles had been slightly curved over the arms to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Together, all three areas were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the design of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and then were loose to top it off) signify a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs probably were reserved for the senior persons, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both furniture items is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interior 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 style of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 of forms—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and finer items would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and found 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 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 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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