From all the furniture pieces, the chair could be the paramount one. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to further chairs for example the bench or sofa, which can be viewed 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 art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic artwork; it was also semiotic of social standing. At the old royal courts there were plain signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become iconic of superior standing, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As a furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a variety of various models. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types have been evolved to fit to evolving human uses. Because of its close link with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when used. While it does not 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 understood and fairly regarded by a person using it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several areas of the chair are named like the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of the chair is to support our human body, its credit is judged generally from how fully it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the design of a chair, the designer is restricted by certain static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that created distinctive chair shapes, expressive of the premier task in the spheres of technique and art. Within such cultures, a 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful scheme, are today known from tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs formed as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular construction was crafted. There was in our view no particular difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The general difference lied in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed as an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool this form persisted until much later points. But the stool also then took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were made out of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappears somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient specimen still in form but in a trove of pictorial objects. The archetype is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are displayed. These curved legs were presumably crafted with bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely strong and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; quite a few statues of seated Romans are evidence of a denser and apparently slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both features, light and heavy, were revived within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of notable originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of images and artworks has been kept safe, displaying the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing likeness to styles of past chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been constructed both with or without arms although never missing a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles could be marginally curved over the arms in order to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). All three limbs had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose to top it off) indicate a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs probably were reserved for the senior persons, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decoration parts are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks display 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 between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The design 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 of forms—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes its 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. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer examples may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread 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 popularised 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 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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