Out of all furniture needs, the chair could be of the most importance. While many other items (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed makes like a bench and sofa, which may be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic item; it was historically a signifier of social status. Within the past royal courts there were social distinctions between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior standing, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture form, the chair encompasses a wealth of various models. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design 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.
Modern living has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types have evolved to fit to changing human needs. From its particular relationship with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when used. Although it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and tested with a person using it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several elements of the chair have been given names corresponding to the parts of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary function of the chair is to support the body, its worth is tested principally by how well it does fulfill this practical use. In the build of the chair, the chair maker is restricted within the static rules and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There were societies that had made iconic chair types, as expressive of the principal task in the industries of craft and design. Within these peoples, individual mention needs to 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert craft, are a finding from tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular design was created. There was from our understanding no particular change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The main difference lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted as an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this form continued during much later points. But the stool also was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made with wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, can be seen somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient item still in form but seen in a wealth of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those were shown. These odd legs were understood to have been created out of bent wood and were probably had to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely solid and were plainly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; designs of statues of seated Romans display chairs of a heavier and apparently rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were revived within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of considerable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be followed as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and artworks was preserved, detailing the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
As in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been found both with and without arms although always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one design, however, the stiles had been delicately curved on top of the arms so as to fit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three areas had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of a back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only to a limited ability support corner joints (and then are loose as well) are a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs presumably were only for older individuals, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings show a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with 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 form—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of comfort 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 cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of fairly thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and finer designs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised 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 reknowned 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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