From each of the furniture needs, the chair could be the imperative one. While most other forms (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed forms for example a bench and sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic piece of art; it was also a symbol of social status. Within the historical royal courts there were important distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. From the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior position, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In a furniture construction, the chair is employed for a range of various forms. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have evolved to conform to evolving human needs. From its unique relationship with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when used. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly regarded with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various limbs of a chair have been labeled like the parts of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple job of the chair is to support the body, its worth is judged basically for how well it measures up to this practical function. In the structure of a chair, the carpenter is limited by the static laws and principal measurements. Under these limitations, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extends over dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that held individual chair shapes, expressions of the topmost task in the arenas of craft and creativity. Within such peoples, particular note 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 construct of expert craft, are today seen from tomb discoveries. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs designed as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular construction was created. There seems to be no marked differentiation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only variation exists in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted as an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool that chair stayed around for much later periods of time. But the stool also then was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be noted, 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 were in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are created from wood. The simple make of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came again but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient item still extant but as in a trove of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs can be shown. These strange legs were thought to have been manufactured with bent wood and were probably put under a large amount of 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 solid and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; designs of casts of seated Romans offer evidence of a thicker and apparently kind of less intricately built klismos. Both designs, the light or the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos influence can be seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of marked originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and works of art has been preserved, displaying the interior and outside of Chinese homes and the furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing familiarity to pictures of past chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair can be constructed both with and without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, though, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms in order to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Together, all three areas had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the back splat later had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a restricted capability embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose into the bargain) represent an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs probably were reserved only for elderly individuals, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not look to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by its harmonious 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 of forms—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of quite thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket items would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popular 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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