26 Jun 10 The History of the Chair
Of all furniture needs, the chair could be of most importance. While the majority of other forms (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be looked upon here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further items including the bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic creation; it is historically an indicator of social ranking. In the Medieval royal courts there were important signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed an identifier of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
In its furniture purpose, the chair can be employed for a number of different makes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types has been adapted to fit to differing human requirements. Because of its close importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when utilised. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and tested by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the various elements of the chair were given names likened to the elements of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear purpose of a chair is to support your body, its worth is tested primarily on how fully it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the creation of a chair, the chair maker is bound for certain static rules and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There existed peoples that had individual chair types, seen of the topmost object in the industries of handling and creativity. In these civilisations, special 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful scheme, are today a finding from findings made in tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular form was obtained. There was to our understanding no particular differentiation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The real change lies in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured to be an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool the stool persisted during much later points. But the stool then also was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were worked out of wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, came again but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient fossil still around but from a trove of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which are visible. These strange legs were thought to be executed in bent wood and were thus had to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very stable and were clearly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; quite a few statues of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and apparently slightly less delicately built klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist era. The klismos design is found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable originality of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as well as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and artworks was kept safe, showing the insides and exteriors of Chinese households and their furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting similarity to styles of past chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is constructed both with and without arms though never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles are slightly curved by the arms in order to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, the three sections are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of this back splat then had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a limited extent embolden corner joints (as well as being loose to top that off) are a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for senior individuals in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed 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 change in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decoration parts are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been constructed by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same era, had 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 interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by 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 styles—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made 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 have wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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 popular 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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