From each of the furniture objects, the chair might be the paramount one. While the majority of other items (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further items like the bench and sofa, which may be considered 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 intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic object; it was also a signifier of social placement. Within the Medieval royal courts there were social signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior dignity, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As a furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a wealth of different models. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make 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.
Modern day living has developed new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have been perfected to match to differing human uses. Because of its close connection with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when utilised. Though it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged with a person using it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the individual elements of a chair have been given names like the areas of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple role of your chair is to support a human body, its credit is judged principally on how completely it measures up to this practical job. Within the design of a chair, the designer is restricted in certain static legislation and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had made iconic chair shapes, seen of the leading endeavour in the arenas of craft and design. From these civilisations, individual 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled design, are now known from tomb discoveries. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs formed akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular form was obtained. There appears to be no particular variation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The general variation exists in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was created for an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool the form existed for much later points in time. But the stool also was designed for the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today’s 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 constructed in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were formed 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 secured between them, reappears at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient specimen still extant but from a trove of pictorial material. The significant kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs are seen. These curved legs were probably created out of bent wood and were in that case subjected to extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very strong and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; existing models of seated Romans offer designs of a heavier and apparently slightly crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special kinds of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be tracked as well as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of images and artworks has been kept, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing likeness to representations of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been found both with or without arms however always having a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles had been marginally curved above the arms for the purpose of conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). All three parts are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would only to a limited extent support corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) indicate a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were only for senior individuals, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto 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 signature on the chair. Artworks project 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 in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed 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. Though this type of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and expensive 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 styles—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of rather thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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 popular 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 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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