Chair

chair, seat with a back, intended for one person. It is one of the most ancient forms of furniture, dating from the 3rd dynasty of ancient Egypt (c. 2650–c. 2575 bce).

It was common for early Egyptian chairs to have legs shaped like those of animals. The seats were corded or dished (hollowed) in wood and topped with a pad or cushion. The ancient Greek klismos was once considered one of the most elegant chair designs. The seat, of plaited cord, was supported on sharply curved sabre-shaped legs, tapering to the feet. The horizontal back rail, curved to fit the body, was supported on three uprights. The scissors chair, or X-chair, which had a seat supported on an X-shaped frame, dates back at least to Roman times. It was especially popular in the 14th and 15th centuries in western Europe and reached great heights of elegance in Italy during the Renaissance. Renaissance chairs were of two principal varieties: those light enough to be moved easily and those heavy thronelike seats used by the head of a household or other important people.

In Tudor England the chair for the master of the house had a heavy boxlike frame and was placed on a dais in the great hall. Turned (shaped on a lathe) chairs, which had been used from early times, reached their most elaborate forms at this time, their frames consisting of turned posts and spindles. Many chairs in the 16th century depended on upholstery for decoration. Square in outline, this type had a back formed by a pair of uprights spanned by a strip of velvet or brocade trimmed with fringes or a strip of leather, sometimes tooled. The material was held in place by large-headed brass nails. In the 17th century large numbers of richly carved chairs were produced. In Italy many pieces of furniture were the work of sculptors, the most outstanding of whom was Andrea Brustolon. His suite of chairs now in the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice, with legs and arms carved as gnarled tree trunks and branches, arms supported by black boys with heads and arms of ebony and breeches of boxwood, marked his zenith.

In France the square lines of 16th-century chairs gradually gave way to more luxurious padding and carved arms ending in scrolls or animals’ heads. During the reign of Louis XIV, furniture became grander. Chair backs became higher and had curved tops, arms were sometimes upholstered, seats were wider, and woodwork was finely carved and gilded or painted.

mahogany ribbonback chairs

In England the Restoration brought a similar trend toward more luxurious living, but the exuberant styles imported by large numbers of immigrant Continental craftsmen had to be modified for English tastes. A finely carved front stretcher became fashionable but was abandoned at the end of the 17th century with the introduction of the cabriole leg. The gently curved back and cabriole legs of chairs first used in the Queen Anne period in England remained popular for half a century. Rococo design showed itself in the ribbonback, or ribband-back, chairs (chairs whose splats are curved in an intricate pattern of ribbons and bows) and “French chairs” illustrated in Thomas Chippendale’s Gentleman and Cabinetmaker’s Director, which also recorded the popularity of Gothic and chinoiserie (Chinese-style) designs.

side chair

American furniture makers sometimes adapted simplified versions of English styles from the late 17th century. Windsor chairs were particularly popular in the late 18th century and were developed to a greater degree than in England.

The Neoclassical movement in the 1760s led a return to straight but more delicate lines, with England and France setting the fashion for Europe. Straight tapering and reeded legs and square, oval, or shield-shaped backs were the mode. The most elegant English chairs of the Regency period and French chairs of the Empire period adapted the sabre leg of the Greek klismos. French chairs after the Revolution of 1789 were much simpler and more austere. England and France continued to dominate chair fashions throughout most of the 19th century, but styles were largely adaptations of those of previous eras.

After World War I the architect and designer Marcel Breuer developed the first tubular steel chair, a cantilevered form with a frame made from a continuous tubular strip. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair of 1929, with its gently curved steel supports and buttoned leather upholstery, is a modern classic. Le Corbusier, a Swiss-born architect, experimented with laminated bentwood chairs, as did the Finn Alvar Aalto. Molded forms were extended to entire chairs in both plywood and plastic by the Americans Charles Eames and Ray Eames and the Finn Eero Saarinen. Among the developments of the late 20th century were the beanbag chair and an inflatable plastic chair. See also ladder-back chair; wainscot chair.