The History of the Chair

 
Pull up a chair. And take a good look at it. It forms our bodies. It shapes our thinking. It's one of the first technologies an American or European child encounters. No sooner has a child been weaned than it learns to eat in an elevated model. And even before, it is (by law) strapped into a special molded minichair for automobile transportation, and indeed is sometimes carried by hand in the same little seat. At school, the chair is one of the most common objects in the classroom and among the first words a child learns to read and write. 

One of the first challenges we have in life is learning to sit on a chair. 
 

Yes, chairs are in every sense fundamental to us. With their humbler cousins, the stools and benches, they have been with us for millennia. Curiously, though, they are neither essential nor especially healthful even in industrial and postindustrial societies—even if a few activities probably do demand them. Until recently, the majority of the world's people rarely used chairs, and many still do not. Yet chairs have spread inexorably around the world, occasionally promoted deliberately by Western rule or influence but more often spontaneously adopted. The change has been one of the most thoroughgoing and apparently irreversible in the history of material culture.

 
Where does the word chair come from?

 
The word chair comes from the early 13th-century English word chaere, from Old French chaiere (meaning chair, seat, throne), from Latin cathedra (seat). It is the Latin word for chair (cathedra), which forms our word for cathedrals. This is because cathedrals are where the bishops have seats.
 

To think that Lincoln Cathedral takes it's name from the chair is pretty amazing.

The early history of the chair
 

The chair has been used since antiquity, although for many centuries it was a symbolic article of state and dignity rather than an article for ordinary use. "The chair" is still used as the emblem of authority in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom and Canada, and in many other settings. In keeping with this historical connotation of the "chair" as the symbol of authority, committees, boards of directors, and academic departments all have a 'chairman' or 'chair'. Endowed professorships are referred to as chairs. It was not until the 16th century that chairs became common. Until then, people sat on chests, benches, and stools, which were the ordinary seats of everyday life. The number of chairs which have survived from an earlier date is exceedingly limited; most examples are of ecclesiastical, seigneurial or feudal origin.
 
Chairs were in existence since at least the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt (c. 3100 BC). They were covered with cloth or leather, were made of carved wood, and were much lower than today's chairs – chair seats were sometimes only 10 inches high. In ancient Egypt chairs appear to have been of great richness and splendor. Fashioned of ebony and ivory, or of carved and gilded wood, they were covered with costly materials, magnificent patterns and supported upon representations of the legs of beasts or the figures of captives. Generally speaking, the higher ranked an individual was, the taller and more sumptuous was the chair he sat on and the greater the honor. On state occasions the pharaoh sat on a throne, often with a little footstool in front of it.

A chair recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamun, chairs were a sign of wealth and class in Acient Egypt.

 
The average Egyptian family rarely had chairs, and if they did, it was usually only the master of the household who sat on a chair. Among the better off, the chairs might be painted to look like the ornate inlaid and carved chairs of the rich, but the craftsmanship was usually poor.
 
The earliest images of chairs in China are from sixth-century Buddhist murals and stele, but the practice of sitting in chairs at that time was rare. It wasn't until the twelfth century that chairs became widespread in China. Scholars disagree on the reasons for the adoption of the chair. The most common theories are that the chair was an outgrowth of indigenous Chinese furniture, that it evolved from a camp stool imported from Central Asia, that it was introduced to China by Christian missionaries in the seventh century, and that the chair came to China from India as a form of Buddhist monastic furniture. In modern China, unlike Korea or Japan, it is no longer common to sit at floor level.
 

The Renaissance and modern history of the chair
 

In Europe, it was owing in great measure to the Renaissance that the chair ceased to be a privilege of state and became a standard item of furniture for anyone who could afford to buy it. Once the idea of privilege faded the chair speedily came into general use. Almost at once the chair began to change every few years to reflect the fashions of the day.
 
In the 1880s, chairs became more common in American households and usually there was a chair provided for every family member to sit down to dinner. By the 1830s, factory-manufactured “fancy chairs” like those by Sears. Roebuck, and Co. allowed families to purchase machined sets. With the Industrial Revolution, chairs became much more available.
 
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. The recliner became a popular form, at least in part due to radio and television.

Plastic garden chairs have been a staple in England for half a century.
 

The modern movement of the 1960s produced new forms of chairs: the butterfly chair (originally called the Hardoy chair), bean bags, and the egg-shaped pod chair that turns. It also introduced the first mass-produced plastic chairs such as the Bofinger chair in 1966. Technological advances led to molded plywood and wood laminate chairs, as well as chairs made of leather or polymers. Mechanical technology incorporated into the chair enabled adjustable chairs, especially for office use. Motors embedded in the chair resulted in massage chairs.

 
Chair.Furniture

Thousands of years of history have brought you to this moment. Our chairs are shaped by the history before us. Take a look at our bestsellers below:

• Scandinavian Style Bristol SNR Chair

  Discover the all new Bristol chair exclusive to Chair Furniture!  Made in France, perfected to a T, quality and design at an affordable price... what more could you want?

  £69.00  

  More details Add to cart

• Chaise DSW EVO

  Natural and timeless!

  £79.00  

  More details Add to cart

  SALE!

• Tulip Armrest Chair

  Revolving elegance with an armrest 

  £154.00  

  More details Add to cart

• DAW Patchwork Chair

  Bold and beautiful

  £99.00  

  More details Add to cart

£69.00 £154.00

FAQs

1. When was the first chair invented?

Chairs have existed since 3100 B.C. There may have been earlier examples, but this is the first evidence we have of a chair.

2. Where were chairs invented?

We believe that chairs were invented in Ancient Egypt. They were made of wood, and covered with either cloth or leather.

For more interior inspiration, have a look at our social media accounts and keep up to date with the latest trends  .

Better Sit Down For This One: An Exciting Book About The History Of Chairs

toggle caption

Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski

Please, have a seat; it's time to talk about chairs.

Thomas Jefferson collected chairs. Pee Wee Herman named his 'Chairy.' Archie Bunker's beloved wingback is now at The National Museum of American History. And when the Dowager Countess of Downton Abbey sat on a swivel chair for the first time, she was in for a surprise.

Now I Sit Me Down

By Witold Rybczynski

Buy Featured Book

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?

In the new book Now I Sit Me Down architect Witold Rybczynski traces the history of chairs. Take a close look at what you're sitting on, he says, and you'll learn about trends in architecture, design, culture and society.

When Rybczynski sits down to write, it's in an old, wooden swivel chair he bought at a flea market 40-some years ago. It reclines, it tilts, and it's well-worn. "This isn't just me," he says. "This is also whoever owned it before me. The wear and tear is kind of nice in an old chair."

Chairs are old — really old. But when exactly did humans decide the ground wasn't good enough? The oldest kind of chair, Rybcynski believes, was probably a folding chair — think of the nomadic tribes in ancient China, for example. "There are lots of occasions where you want to walk somewhere and then you want to sit," Rybczynski says. Who knew your beach chair had such a backstory?

toggle caption

Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski

The earliest records of chairs appear in Egyptian tomb paintings and ancient Greek art. The oldest representation Rybczynski could find is a Greek sculpture from 3,000 B.C., which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (You can see it right here.) It shows a harpist sitting on a simple, four-legged chair. "We would call it a kitchen chair," says Rybczynski.

"The striking thing about the Greeks," Rybczynski explains, "is that the chairs become very democratic very quickly."

Just take a look at the pictures — "there are women in chairs, gods in chairs, musicians — so it clearly was a tool used by many people," he says.

But democratic sitting didn't last. Fast forward to Europe in the Middle Ages and most people didn't get chairs at all. "They just sat on whatever was around because they couldn't afford it," Rybczynski says. "You had to be really rich to afford something like a chair. If they were lucky they sat on a bench — that was about the height of sitting."

toggle caption

Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski

A chair's body has just a handful of parts: Legs, sometimes arms, a seat and a back. It may sound simple, but it's not. "They're like little buildings, in a way, because they have to be beautiful but they have to be practical," Rybczynski says. "They actually have to be very structurally sound."

In his book, Rybczynski writes of the many different architects and designers who've helped shape the history of the chair. In the 1830s German-Austrian furniture maker Michael Thonet invented the Vienna chair — you've probably seen those at coffee shops and cafes. Thonet simplified the process of bending wood, Rybczynski said, and turned the craft of chair-making into an industry.

He also celebrates the work of husband and wife team Charles and Ray Eames who began designing chairs in the 1940s. They designed shiny, smooth shells made of wood or a kind of plastic used in the linings of army helmets. "The object was to take a material which was a high performance material developed during the war, and try to make it available to householders at non-military prices," Eames explained in a 1956 NBC interview.

The Eames revolutionized chair production. From airports to offices, they came up with designs that were innovative and lent themselves to mass production. "They moved furniture from the traditional appearance to something very modern," says Rybczynski. Using materials like metal and plywood, they created chairs that remain popular today.

toggle caption

Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski

The "ultimate descendant" of the Eames shell chair is the one-piece, plastic chair — yes, those cheap, stack-able, patio chairs. They may not be pretty, but they solved a huge structural problem. "The challenge for chairs was always the joint," Rybczynski says. "Because, when you sit in a chair, the joints move and eventually they get loose and the chair starts to get wobbly. The plastic chair is one piece, so it gets rid of the joints."

Plastic chairs can be pretty indestructible. Designer Andrew Morrison notes that TV footage often shows intact plastic chairs strewn about in the aftermath of bombings. "Wooden chairs would never survive the blast, they'd be splintered to pieces," he says.

The ubiquity of the plastic chair (there's an entire website devoted to that subject) is all thanks to the "monobloc" mold, Rybczynski explains. "The whole process, from pellets to completed chair, takes less than a minute," he writes. "Since the raw material is relatively inexpensive, the production cost is extremely low."

The plastic chair may be just the latest chapter in the long and enduring history of chair evolution. After all, Rybczynski points out: "The problem of sitting is universal."

Still Sitting There?

In addition to Witold Rybczynski's Now I Sit Me Down, here are a couple more books in the chair genre you might want to check out:

1000 Chairs by Charlotte and Peter Fiell
From Eero Saarinen to Frank Lloyd Wright, this is an encyclopedia of chair design with stunning but compact images of every style imaginable. Each chair gets a page with brief descriptions of its history, materials, importance and/or creator's intent. The Fiells have written a number of books on design, including a follow-up to 1000 Chairs called Chairs: 1,000 Masterpieces of Modern Design, 1800 to the Present Day.

And for the young chair enthusiast in your life:

Down the Back of the Chair by Margaret Mahy and Polly Dunbar
If you've ever lifted up a chair cushion and found keys, pencils, coins or other missing valuables, you'll relate to the delightfully ridiculous treasures one family finds in Down the Back of the Chair, originally a poem by New Zealand author Margaret Mahy. Polly Dunbar's colorful illustrations are the perfect match for Mahy's wacky sense of humor.

Peter's Chair by Ezra Jack Keats
If you can forgive the old-school blue-for-boys/pink-for-girls color themes in this 1967 classic, this is a very sweet story about how we grow into new chairs as we get older — and how to make room for new, smaller members of the family, who will want to sit beside you.

Pablo & His Chair by Delphine Perret
Pablo is disappointed when his grandmother gives him a chair for his birthday. But, with the power of his imagination, his chair becomes his ticket to tour the world on an acrobatic adventure. When he returns home, Pablo's chair is waiting for him at the table, where his family gathers to hear him tell his tale.