26 Jun 10 The History of the Chair
Of all furniture forms, the chair might be the most important. While the majority of other objects (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes such as a bench and sofa, which can be seen 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 a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic piece of art; it was also an indicator of social rank. In the historical royal courts there were social signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to use a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been an identifier of superior dignity, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As a furniture form, the chair is used for a variety of various models. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have been evolved to match to changing human needs. For its close connection with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when being utilised. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly evaluated with a person using it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the several elements of a chair are labeled corresponding to the elements of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear role of your chair is to support the body, its worth is judged principally by how completely it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the creation of a chair, the builder is bound in certain static regulations and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covered an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that held significant chair forms, expressive of the topmost task in the areas of handling and design. Within these such civilisations, individual note needs to 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 objects of skilled design, were known from findings made in tombs. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs designed like those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular form was created. There was in our knowledge no notable change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The simple difference lied in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was manufactured for an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool that kind persisted until much later points. But the stool also was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are worked of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient fossil still in form but from a variety of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are shown. These odd legs were understood to be executed with bent wood and were probably had huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super solid and were clearly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; existing models of seated Romans are evidence of a heavier and in appearance slightly less intricately constructed klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist period. The klismos style is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of notable originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as well as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and artworks had been protected, showing the inside and outside of Chinese homes and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting likeness to styles of older chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is constructed both with and without arms though never without its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles could be delicately curved by the arms for the purpose of fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). The three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the style of the back splat had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a limited ability support corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top it off) represent a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were allowed only for older persons, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been held together by either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks project a style 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 produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in 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 displayed in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer examples can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference 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 well-known 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 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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