The Slagosphere

Out of all furniture needs, the chair might be of the most importance. While most of the other forms (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be looked upon here in the general sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs including a bench or sofa, which can be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it was historically an indicator of social placement. In the past royal courts there were social connotations between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. During the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior status, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.

As its furniture form, the chair ranges from a variety of variations. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make 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.

Our modern lifestyle has derived new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes have been evolved to suit to growing human uses. Due to its particular relationship with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when being utilised. While it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and tested with a person using it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the different parts of a chair are given labels likened to the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elemental role of the chair is to support the body, its credit is tested primarily on how well it measures up to this practical purpose. In the creation of a chair, the carpenter is bound for particular static rules and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There are peoples that made significant chair forms, as seen of the topmost craft in the arenas of technique and creativity. In such 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful craft, are now known from findings made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular structure was obtained. There was from our understanding no particular change from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The only change lies in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed as an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool that chair persevered until much later times. But the stool then also was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function 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 work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were formed of wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen again but some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient fossil still existing but as seen in a large amount of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be visible. These curving legs were considered to be created with bent wood and were likely to have been put under great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very stable and were particularly pointed out.

The Romans adopted the Greek chair; some models of seated Romans offer designs of a more heavyset and in appearance slightly less intricately built klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist period. The klismos design is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special forms of considerable originality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and artworks was preserved, displaying the interior and outer parts of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting familiarity to representations of older chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair was constructed both with and without arms although never missing its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, however, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms so as to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). Each of the three limbs were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of a back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a limited capability embolden corner joints (and then are loose additionally) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs probably were reserved only for the senior family members, for they were held in great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is seen 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. Although this kind of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself with its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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
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 versions 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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