Out of each of the furniture items, the chair may be paramount. While the majority of other items (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to developed pieces including a bench or 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 distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic craft; it was also a symbol of social standing. In the historical royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. From the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior standing, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher level.
In its furniture construction, the chair encompasses a variety of various models. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate 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 to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been perfected to suit to differing human uses. For its close relationship with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when in use. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and evaluated with a person using it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the several limbs of a chair were given labels according to the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal work of a chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated generally on how completely it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the construction of a chair, the maker is restricted under the static regulation and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There existed peoples that held significant chair types, seen of the premier craft in the spheres of handling and creativity. Out of those peoples, special note can 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 masterful design, were seen from tomb discoveries. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs structured akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular structure was obtained. There was to our understanding no marked difference from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The simple variation lied in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that form stayed around for much later points. But the stool then was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now 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 in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are created of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came up some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient item still in form but as found in a variety of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs would be seen. These unique legs were possibly manufactured in bent wood and were as such needed to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely stable and were visibly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; designs of casts of seated Romans are evidence of a heavier and in appearance slightly crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some types of considerable individuality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be followed as far as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of sketches and artworks has been preserved, showing the interior and outside of Chinese households and the furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting similarity to images of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with or without arms although never missing its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, though, the stiles are delicately curved over the arms to fit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). Together, the three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of the back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a limited capability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) signify a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were allowed only for senior individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Works of art project a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of 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 in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of wealthy 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 can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those 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 of forms—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved 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 are constructed from wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the favourite 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
In 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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