The History of the Chair

Of all furniture needs, the chair might be the primary one. While most of the other items (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed chairs such as a bench or 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 evidently distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic item; it historically was a symbol of social placement. Within the historical royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. In the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior dignity, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.

As its furniture form, the chair holds a variety of various makes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes have adapted to conform to differing human desires. Due to its particular link with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when being utilised. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly regarded by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various parts of the chair were labeled as the limbs of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic role of your chair is to support our body, its credit is valued firstly from how fully it does measure up to this practical function. Within the construction of a chair, the maker is limited within the static law and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair maker has large freedom.

The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that created distinctive chair shapes, expressions of the topmost task in the industries of craft and creativity. In these peoples, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful design, are now known from tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs structured similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular construction was created. There was from our understanding no notable difference in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The simple difference was in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed as an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool that form stayed around until much later periods of time. But the stool also then was made as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were formed out of wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came again somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still existing but as seen in a wealth of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them could be shown. These creative legs were likely to be manufactured of bent wood and were thus needed to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very stable and were visibly indicated.

The Romans adopted the Greek chair; quite a few statues of seated Romans display chairs of a thicker and apparently kind of more crudely designed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of considerable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of drawings and paintings had been kept, showing the interior and exterior of Chinese homes and their furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing familiarity to images of ancient chairs.

As in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair was designed both with and without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles were delicately curved above the arms in order to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Together, the three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the Chinese back splat had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a limited capability reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose in the bargain) signify an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs probably were reserved for the senior individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and aesthetic issues are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been held together with 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 had its name on the chair. Works of art project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. 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 little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket examples can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used in place of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popular 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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