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We are
primarily a higher end consignment
store dealing in
furniture, accessories, artwork, home decor, or just
anything for your home. Any questions about
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Thomasville Furniture,
Ethan Allen,
Henredon Furniture,
Drexel Furniture, and
John Widdicomb to mention a few brand furniture
names. |
History of the chair
The chair is of extreme antiquity, although for many
centuries and indeed for thousands of years it was an
article of state and dignity rather than an article of
ordinary use. “The chair” is still extensively used as
the emblem of authority in the British House of
Commons and in public meetings. It was not, in fact,
until the 16th century that it became common anywhere.
The chest, the bench and the stool were until then the
ordinary seats of everyday life, and the number of
chairs which have survived from an earlier date is
exceedingly limited; most of such examples are of
ecclesiastical or seigneurial origin. Our knowledge of
the chairs of remote antiquity is derived almost
entirely from monuments, sculpture and paintings. A
few actual examples exist in the British Museum, in
the Egyptian museum at Cairo, and elsewhere.
Egyptian chairs
In ancient Egypt chairs appear to have been of great
richness and splendour. Fashioned of ebony and ivory,
or of carved and gilded wood, they were covered with
costly materials and supported upon representations of
the legs of beasts or the figures of captives. An
arm-chair in fine preservation found in a tomb in the
Valley of the Kings is astonishingly similar, even in
small details, to that "Empire" style which followed
Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. The earliest monuments
of Nineveh represent a chair without a back but with
tastefully carved legs ending in lions’ claws or
bulls’ hoofs. Others are supported by figures in the
nature of caryatides or by animals.
Greek and Roman chairs
The earliest known form of Greek chair dates back to
six or seven centuries before Christ. On the frieze of
the Parthenon Zeus occupies a square seat with a
bar-back and thick turned legs; it is ornamented with
winged sphinxes and the feet of beasts. The
characteristic Roman chairs were of marble, also
adorned with sphinxes. The curule chair was originally
very similar in form to the modern folding chair, but
eventually received a good deal of ornament. The most
famous of the very few chairs which have come down
from a remote antiquity is the reputed chair of St.
Peter in St Peter's Basilica at Rome. The wooden
portions are much decayed, but it would appear to be
Byzantine work of the 6th century, and to be really an
ancient sedia gestatoria. It has ivory carvings
representing the labours of Hercules. A few pieces of
an earlier oaken chair have been let in; the existing
one, Gregorovius says, is of acacia wood. The legend
that this was the curile chair of the senator Pudens
is necessarily apocryphal. It is not, as is popularly
supposed, enclosed in Gian Lorenzo Bernini's bronze
chair, but is kept under triple lock and exhibited
only once in a century. Byzantium, like Greece and
Rome, affected the curule form of chair, and in
addition to lions’ heads and winged figures of Victory
(or Nike) and dolphin-shaped arms used also the
lyre-back which has been made familiar by the
pseudo-classical revival of the end of the 18th
century.
Medieval chairs
The chair of Maximian in the cathedral of Ravenna is
believed to date from the middle of the 6th century.
It is of marble, round, with a high back, and is
carved in high relief with figures of saints and
scenes from the Gospels—the Annunciation, the
Adoration of the Magi, the flight into Egypt and the
baptism of Christ. The smaller spaces are filled with
carvings of animals, birds, flowers and foliated
ornament. The Chair of St. Augustine, dating from at
least the early thirteenth century[1] is one of the
oldest cathedrae still in use.
Another very ancient seat is the so-called “Chair of
Dagobert” in the Louvre. It is of cast bronze,
sharpened with the chisel and partially gilt; it is of
the curule or faldstool type and supported upon legs
terminating in the heads and feet of animals. The
seat, which was probably of leather, has disappeared.
Its attribution depends entirely upon the statement of
Suger, abbot of St Denis in the 12th century, who
added a back and arms. Its age has been much
discussed, but Viollet-le-Duc dated it to early
Merovingian times, and it may in any case be taken as
the oldest faldstool in existence.
To the same generic type belongs the famous abbots’
chair of Glastonbury; such chairs might readily be
taken to pieces when their owners travelled. The
faldisterium in time acquired arms and a back, while
retaining its folding shape. The most famous, as well
as the most, ancient, English chair is that made at
the end of the l3th century for Edward I., in which
most subsequent monarchs have been crowned. It is of
an architectural type and of oak, and was covered with
gilded gesso which long since disappeared.
Passing from these historic examples we find the chair
monopolized by the ruler, lay or ecclesiastical, to a
comparatively late date. As the seat of authority it
stood at the head of the lord’s table, on his dais, by
the side of his bed. The seigneurial chair, commoner
in France and the Netherlands than in England, is a
very interesting type, approximating in many respects
to the episcopal or abbatial throne or stall. It early
acquired a very high back and sometimes had a canopy.
Arms were invariable, and the lower part was closed in
with panelled or carved front and sides—the seat,
indeed, was often hinged and sometimes closed with a
key.
That we are still said to sit “in” an arm-chair and
“on" other kinds of chairs is a reminiscence of the
time when the lord or seigneur sat “in his chair.”
These throne-like seats were always architectural in
character, and as Gothic feeling waned took the
distinctive characteristics of Renaissance work.
Chinese chairs
Before the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD), the predominant
sitting positions in the Han Chinese culture and
neighboring cultures such as the Japanese Culture,
Korean Culture, Turkic Culture in Central Asia and Tai
Kadai Cultures to the southwest were the seiza and
lotus position on the floor or sitting mats. A
remarkable change happened during the Tang period, a
period when China was in frequent contact with the
Near East and other civilizations across Eurasia; thus
resulted in many cultural exchanges. This smaller,
mobile folded stool developed into a more stationary,
stately chair with high back. Higher seats first
started to appear amongst the Chinese elite and their
usage soon spread to all levels of society. By the
12th century seating on the floor was rare in China,
unlike in other Asian countries where the custom
continued, and the chair or more commonly the stool
was used in the vast majority of houses throughout the
country. The sedan chair was used at least as early as
the Song Dynasty (960–1279) to transport nobles by
slaves or lower ranking workers.
Renaissance
In Europe, it was owing in great measure to the
Renaissance that the chair ceased to be a privilege of
state, and became the customary companion of whoever
could afford to buy it. Once the idea of privilege
faded the chair speedily came into general use. We
find almost at once began to reflect the fashions of
the hour. No piece of furniture has ever been so close
an index to sumptuary changes. It has varied in size,
shape and sturdiness with the fashion not only of
women’s dress but of men’s also. Thus the chair which
was not, even with its arms purposely suppressed, too
ample during the several reigns of some form or other
of hoops and farthingale, became monstrous when these
protuberances disappeared. Again, the costly laced
coats of the dandy of the 18th and early 19th
centuries were so threatened by the ordinary form of
seat that a “conversation chair” was devised, which
enabled the buck and the ruffler to sit with his face
to the back, his valuable tails hanging unimpeded over
the front. The early chair almost invariably had arms,
and it was not until towards the close of the 16th
century that the smaller form grew common.
The majority of the chairs of all countries until the
middle of the 17th century were of oak without
upholstery, and when it became customary to cushion
them, leather was sometimes employed; subsequently
velvet and silk were extensively used, and at a later
period cheaper and often more durable materials. . In
Abraham Bosse's engraving (illustration, left), a
stylish Parisian musical party of about 1630 have
pulled their low chairs (called "backstools" in
contemporary England) away from the tapestry-hung
walls where they were normally lined up. The padded
back panels were covered with needlework panels to
suit the tapestries, or in other settings with
leather, plain or tooled. Plain cloth across the back
hid the wooden framing. Stools with column legs
complement the set, but aren't en suite. In
seventeenth century France the bergere chair became
fashionable among the nobility and was often made of
walnut.
Leather was not infrequently used even for the costly
and elaborate chairs of the faldstool
form—occasionally sheathed in thin plates of
silver—which Venice sent all over Europe. To this day,
indeed, leather is one of the most frequently employed
materials for chair covering. The outstanding
characteristic of most chairs until the middle of the
17th century was massiveness and solidity. Being
usually made of oak, they were of considerable weight,
and it was not until the introduction of the handsome
Louis XIII chairs with cane backs and seats that
either weight or solidity was reduced.
English chairs
Although English furniture derives so extensively from
foreign and especially French and Italian models, the
earlier forms of English chairs owed but little to
exotic influences. This was especially the case down
to the end of the Tudor period, after which France
began to set her mark upon the British chair. The
squat variety, with heavy and sombre back, carved like
a piece of panelling, gave place to a taller, more
slender, and more elegant form, in which the framework
only was carved, and attempts were made at ornament in
new directions. The stretcher especially offered
opportunities which were not lost upon the
cabinet-makers of the Restoration. From a mere
uncompromising cross-bar intended to strengthen the
construction it blossomed, almost suddenly, into an
elaborate scroll-work or an exceedingly graceful
semicircular ornament connecting all four legs, with a
vase-shaped knob in the centre. The arms and legs of
chairs of this period were scrolled, the splats of the
back often showing a rich arrangement of spirals and
scrolls. This most decorative of all types appears to
have been popularized in England by the cavaliers who
had been in exile with Charles II, and had become
familiar with it in the north-western parts of the
European continent. During the reign of William and
Mary these charming forms degenerated into something
much stiffer and more rectangular, with a solid, more
or less fiddle-shaped splat and a cabriole leg with
pad feet. The more ornamental examples had cane seats
and ill-proportioned cane backs. From these forms was
gradually developed the Chippendale chair, with its
elaborately interlaced back, its graceful arms and
square or cabriole legs, the latter terminating in the
claw and ball or the pad foot. George Hepplewhite,
Thomas Sheraton and Robert Adam all aimed at
lightening the chair, which, even in the master hands
of Thomas Chippendale, remained comparatively heavy.
The endeavour succeeded, and the modern chair is
everywhere comparatively slight.
18th century chairs
Informal, galante manners and a new half-reclining
posture that replaced the former bolt-upright demeanor
of court and aristocracy in the age of Louis XIV went
hand-in-hand with new commodious seat furniture,
developed in Paris about 1720 (illustration, right).
The new Rococo chairs were upholstered à chassis, on
removable frames secured by clips, so that changes
from winter to summer furniture could be effected
without recourse to the menuisier. Off-season
upholstered frames were stored in the garde-meuble.
These early Louis XV chairs have backs upholstered à
la reine, with the back in a flat panel that was
ordinarily placed squared to the wall, so that the
top-rails' curves complemented those of the boiserie
panels behind them.
In the illustration, the symmetrical cusped and
scrolling seatrails that flow into stubby cabriole
legs of these comfortable low armchairs (chauffeuses)
have their direct origins in Chinese lacquer tables
(not chairs).
French fashions in chairs, as with everything else,
radiated from Paris. From the late 1720s, fashionable
"Louis XV" French chairs were constructed without
stretchers, which interfered with the unified flow of
curved seatrails into cabriole legs that generally
ended in scroll feet. According to strict guild
regulations in force until the Revolution, French
chairmaking was the business of the menuisier alone,
whose craft was conjoined with that of the upholsterer
(huissier), both of whom specialized in
seat-furniture-making in Paris. A range of specialised
seats were developed and given fanciful names, of
which the comfortable bergère ("shepherdess") is the
most familiar. Walnut and beech were the
characteristics woods employed; finishes were painted
in clear light tones en suite with wall panelling,
gilded (sometimes rechampi en blanc) or left in the
natural color (á la capuchine), in which case walnut
was the timber used. Fruitwoods were popular for
chairmaking in the provinces, where the menuisier
might also be called upon to provide carved and
moulded boiseries for rooms. Lyon, Bordeaux and Liège
all produced characteristic variations on Paris models
between ca. 1725 and 1780.
In the late 1760s in Paris the first Parisian
neoclassical chairs were made, even before the
accession of Louis XVI, whose name is attached to the
first phases of the style. Straight tapering fluted
legs joined by a block at the seat rail and
architectural mouldings, characterize the style, in
which each element is a discrete entity. Louis
Delanois, Jean-Claude Sené and Georges Jacob were
three leading chairmakers in the 1770s and 80s.
The 18th century was, indeed, the golden age of the
chair, especially in France and England, between which
there was considerable give and take of ideas. Even
Diderot could not refrain from writing of them in his
Encyclopédie. The typical Louis Seize chair,
oval-backed and ample of seat, with descending arms
and round-reeded legs, covered in Beauvais or some
such gay tapestry woven with Boucher or Watteau-like
scenes, is a very gracious object, in which the period
reached its high-water mark. The Empire brought in
squat and squabby shapes, comfortable enough no doubt,
but entirely destitute of inspiration. English Empire
chairs were often heavier and more sombre than those
of French design.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Thomas Jefferson
invented the swivel chair.
19th century chairs
The art nouveau school produced chairs of simplicity.
The Arts and Crafts movement produced heavy, straight
lined, minimally ornamented chairs.
20th century and modern chairs
The 20th century saw an increasing use of technology
in chair construction with such things as all-metal
folding chairs, metal-legged chairs, the Slumber
Chair, moulded plastic chairs and ergonomic chairs,
recliner chairs (easy chair), butterfly chair, beanbag
chairs, the egg or pod chair, plywood and laminate
wood chairs, and massage chairs. |
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North: Commerce City
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West: Wheat Ridge, Lakeside, Mountain View,
Edgewater, Lakewood
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East: Aurora
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South: Aurora, Greenwood Village, Cherry Hills
Village, Englewood, Sheridan, Littleton, Bow Mar, Centennial
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