The History of the Chair
Out of all furniture pieces, the chair may be the most important. While the majority of other forms (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the common sense, from stool to throne to derivative items including a bench and sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic creation; it is historically an indicator of social standing. At the old royal courts there were social differences between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to cope with a stool. During the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior rank, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As a furniture construction, the chair holds a range of various models. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since 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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has perfected to match to different human requirements. Due to its unique association with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when in use. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and regarded best by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the different areas of a chair are named according to the areas of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary purpose of a chair is to support our body, its value is valued primarily from how completely it does measure up to this practical job. In the design of a chair, the carpenter is bound under particular static law and principal measurements. Through these limitations, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There existed cultures that held distinctive chair forms, as expressive of the topmost work in the arenas of technique and art. Among those cultures, particular mention 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 result of careful make, are now a finding from tomb findings. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs structured not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular form was crafted. There seemed to be no marked change between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The simple variation existed in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was crafted to be an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool that stool persevered til much later days. But the stool then also was made for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are worked out of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient fossil still existing but in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The better recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those were shown. These unique legs were considered to have been executed from bent wood and were thus bore a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely durable and were overtly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and which appear to be a kind of crudely built klismos. Both features, light and heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist time. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of profound individuality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of images and artworks had been protected, displaying the inside and outer parts of Chinese homes and the furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing familiarity to designs of past chairs.
Like in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair was seen both with and without arms but always having the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles were slightly curved on top of the arms in order to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). Each of the three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat then had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a limited limit embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) represent a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were kept for the senior individuals, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not look to have been held together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be found in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with 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 style—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes such 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. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and found favour 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 well-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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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