The History of the Chair
June 26th, 2010From all the furniture forms, the chair could be the most imperative. While most other pieces (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds like the bench or sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it historically was symbolic of social status. Within the old royal courts there were social distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to make do with a stool. In the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior rank, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture construction, the chair is used for a variety of different forms. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have been evolved to conform to evolving human uses. For its close importance with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when being used. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and clearly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the individual areas of a chair were labeled like the names of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original job of the chair is to support our human body, its worth is tested firstly on how well it does measure up to this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of the chair, the chair maker is bound with some static rules and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There are societies that had iconic chair shapes, seen of the topmost craft in the spheres of craft and creativity. From these cultures, special note can 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful make, are known from tomb discoveries. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs structured as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular design was obtained. There was in our view no marked change in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The real variation exists in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was manufactured to be an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool this form persevered during much later periods of time. But the stool then was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be seen, 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 are constructed in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were made from wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came up but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still in form but as in a large amount of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground 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 which would be visible. These strange legs were presumably manufactured out of bent wood and were therefore had great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very stable and were plainly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; existing models of seated Romans offer evidence of a denser and which appear to be a slightly less intricately designed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were popularised in the Classicist time. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special types of considerable individuality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and artworks was protected, displaying the interior and exteriors of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing familiarity to designs of ancient chairs.
As in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been constructed both with or without arms though always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, however, the stiles were lightly curved above the arms for the purpose of conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). Together, all three parts were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of this back splat then had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a limited ability stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose to top it off) are a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs presumably were reserved only for older persons in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not look to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised on 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 left its name on the chair. Artworks show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is found in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant 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 is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of rather thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular 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 commonly 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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