The History of the Chair
Out of all furniture pieces, the chair may be the imperative one. While most of the other forms (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex makes like a bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic item; it is historically an indicator of social status. From the Medieval royal courts there were plain differences between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to make do with a stool. During the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior status, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture creation, the chair encompasses a number of different forms. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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 can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms has been adapted to match to evolving human desires. Because of its unique importance with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when utilised. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly evaluated by a person using it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the individual parts of the chair are labeled like the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary role of a chair is to support our human body, its value is evaluated firstly for how well it measures up to this practical role. In the build of a chair, the chair maker is restricted within certain static law and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There were civilizations that had significant chair forms, seen of the highest object in the spheres of craft and aesthetics. Out of these such civilisations, particular mention 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 items of skilled craft, were found from findings made in tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs designed akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular construction was created. There was in our understanding no notable difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The main variation lied in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed for an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool the type continued until much later points. But the stool also was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were formed out of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came up some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient specimen still around but from a large amount of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be visible. These curving legs were possibly executed of bent wood and were as such 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 are therefore extremely solid and were overtly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; quite a few statues of seated Romans show examples of a denser and in appearance rather less intricately built klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were brought back within the Classicist time. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special forms of considerable individuality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as long as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of sketches and works of art has been preserved, detailing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese homes and their furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing similarity to styles of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms but always having a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles could be delicately curved above the arms to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). Each of the three areas had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of this back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (and were loose to top it off) indicate a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs presumably were reserved only for senior members of the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic parts are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been put together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of 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 style—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits 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 tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour in several 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
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 brands 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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