The History Of The Chair

By Author: Laura Lang
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Out of all furniture objects, the chair might be paramount. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex forms including the 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 obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and aesthetic creation; it was historically an indicator of social hierarchy. In the old royal courts there were significant distinctions between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. From the recent century, the director's and manager's chair has been seen as iconic of superior status, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher floor.
In a furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a range of different models. There are chairs created to fit ...
... man's age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types have been evolved to conform to growing human uses. Due to its particular link with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when being utilised. While it does not make a difference to one's appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly evaluated by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several limbs of the chair have been labeled as the elements of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic purpose of a chair is to support your body, its value is valued primarily from how well it does fulfill this practical role. Within the manufacture of the chair, the designer is restricted under some static law and principal measurements. Under these limitations, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There were societies that have created iconic chair shapes, as seen of the leading endeavour in the areas of technique and art. From these civilisations, 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.
EgyptTwo ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of careful scheme, were known from tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs designed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was created. There seemed to be no noteworthy differentiation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The general change was in the complex ornamentation, in the selection of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created to be an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool that stool persisted during much later points. But the stool then also was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366â€57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but aren't able to be folded because the seats are worked from wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and RomeThe typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still extant but from a variety of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are displayed. These creative legs were likely to be crafted from bent wood and were in that case needed to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely durable and were plainly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; quite a few casts of seated Romans offer chairs of a thicker and in appearance rather crudely crafted klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of marked iconicism within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

ChinaThe past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618â€907) a full series of images and paintings was preserved, displaying the inside and exteriors of Chinese households and their furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a number of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to pictures of older chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with or without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles are delicately curved over the arms in order to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). Together, all three areas are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of the Chinese back splat had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that just to a restricted ability support corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) signify an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edgesâ€referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were kept for the senior persons in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th centuryThe Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th centuryA low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse's engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuriesThe French Rococo chair in its most mature styleâ€that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750â€disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows 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 conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour 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 popularised and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th centuryDuring 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.
ModernAfter 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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