Now I Sit Me Down (8 page)

Side chairs have been around a lot longer than claw hammers.
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The oldest representation of a chair that I came across during my visit to the Metropolitan Museum was in a gallery devoted to Cycladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean art. The Cyclades are a group of islands in the southwestern Aegean Sea that was settled in the Late Neolithic period, probably by people from Asia Minor. The island chain was home to a prosperous farming and maritime trading society that predated the Minoan culture by several centuries. The chief surviving records of this prehistoric culture are hundreds of figurines whose function remains obscure; they may have been cult images, protective talismans, or funerary accessories (most have been found in grave sites). It was one of these that caught my eye.

The sculpture was about twelve inches tall. Carved in white marble, it depicted a seated man playing a harp. The harpist, who had an elongated stylized face that anticipated Brancusi, was plucking his instrument with his thumb. His head was thrown back, and he appeared to be singing. It was his chair that interested me: an ordinary side chair with four straight legs without stretchers, and a slightly sloping back. The sole distinctive feature was the backrest, which had a curved top rail and an oval insert—the world's first medallion chair? Cycladic chairs were most likely made of wood—the tenons connecting the legs to the seat rail are plainly visible in the sculpture. The seat was probably woven cord or plaited rushes.

Cycladic harpist sculpture

The label in the glass case informed me that the sculpture dated from 2800–2700
B.C.
I was bowled over. I had spent the day looking at examples of Egyptian chairs, most of which were thronelike and ceremonial. Yet a thousand years earlier, the inhabitants of a small island in the Aegean were making ordinary side chairs. There are Cycladic figurines of musicians sitting on four-legged stools as well as chairs, and it is obvious that this was a chair-sitting culture. Unfortunately, so little is known of this society, which left no written records, that how and why they became sitters remains a mystery.

Around 2000
B.C.
, the Cycladic civilization was absorbed by its larger Minoan neighbor. Historians surmise that the Minoans used beds, couches, and sitting furniture, although the surviving evidence is scant, with the notable exception of the Knossos camp stool, which was likely copied from the Egyptians. The Greeks adopted the folding stool, too, and their thronelike armchairs were based on Egyptian and Western Asiatic models.

There is one original Greek contribution to the history of the chair: the klismos. This chair was distinguished by its curved saber legs and a broad curved backrest at roughly shoulder height. The rear legs were continuous S-shaped pieces, and the front legs were similarly curved. The seat was a loose cushion supported by leather thongs. The delicately tapered and curved saber legs (there were no stretchers) give the chair an instantly recognizable profile that appears in many ancient bas-reliefs and vase paintings.

Klismos chair

Where did the klismos come from? It was neither a replica nor a variant, in the Kubleresque sense; it was something much rarer: an original. The klismos appeared in Greece in the middle of the fifth century
B.C.
, seemingly out of the blue; it had no Egyptian or Assyrian antecedents, nor was it based on earlier Greek models. Like the Greek temple, once the klismos achieved its essential form, it remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years—arms were never added.

The ancient Greeks copied couches, armchairs, and folding stools from other cultures, so what compelled them to invent this beautifully proportioned chair? In a word, posture. The Greeks favored a relaxed posture—hence the popularity of couches—and the klismos, which had a slightly reclined back, allowed the sitter to slouch; in that sense, it was more like a lounge chair. On the other hand, the saber legs were pure fancy—difficult to fabricate and structurally challenging, they could easily crack if they were too slender (it is noteworthy that Greek armchairs, couches, and stools had straight legs). The klismos was an easeful chair, but surely it was not simply the desire for comfort that impelled its design. Maybe it was a result of the Greeks' need for beauty, the same need that made them lavish so much attention on their temples. Or should one look to Greek humanist ideals? Illustrations of klismos chairs show a variety of occupants: gods and heroes, philosophers and poets, musicians and potters, men and women. This was not a throne or a ceremonial chair. Rather it was a chair for everyday use—by everyone. A democratic chair.

The klismos is considered by many to be the most graceful chair ever made. During the Greek Revival of the late eighteenth century, the design was copied by cabinetmakers in Scandinavia, France, Britain, and the United States. The American architect Benjamin Latrobe designed several klismos-inspired chairs, including a set for the oval drawing room of the White House. Architects in particular were drawn to the klismos: Karl Friedrich Schinkel designed a version; so did Erik Gunnar Asplund and Josef Frank; and the saber legs of the klismos undoubtedly influenced Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Chair. It is not possible to test an ancient klismos, because no original Greek chairs have survived, but I had the opportunity to try a recent version: an inexpensive chair designed by the architect Michael Graves for JCPenney. This chair is made of rubberwood, a plantation hardwood from Southeast Asia, and has a padded seat and stretchers to reinforce the legs, but the characteristic curved backrest and saber legs are unmistakable. As I expected, it was comfortable.

Like the folding stool, the klismos is a sitting tool distilled to its essence. But it is also a cultural artifact of great aesthetic refinement. You can copy it, as the British cabinetmaker Thomas Hope did. You can decorate it, as Latrobe did—although that does not really make it a better chair. Or you can figure out how to mass-produce it, as Graves did. But you can't really improve it. It's perfect.

Reincarnation

The curule chair was based on the Greek folding stool, but the Romans showed no interest in the klismos. The few representations of the chair in Roman art are simply copies of Greek originals. The Romans did use thronelike armchairs, as well as wicker chairs that resemble modern tub chairs, but the most common seat was the stool. Roman stools could be plain or elaborate, with four legs or with a curved X-frame like a curule chair. Variations included a settee-type stool for two, and an elongated stool—that is, a bench. Stools and benches were utilitarian, which probably appealed to the practical Romans.

With the fall of the empire, Roman furniture, like so many other artifacts—public baths, aqueducts, paved roads—was forgotten. So was the custom of reclining at the dining table. At a medieval table, the head of the household might occupy a heavy armchair—the “great chair”—but the rest of the diners sat on benches, which were the standard form of table seating. In medieval Europe, as in ancient Egypt, if you were entitled to sit on a chair it meant you were important, because the chief role of furniture was to signify status.

Late-medieval sitting etiquette is illustrated in a French illumination that portrays the trial of Jean II, Duke of Alençon, a supporter of Joan of Arc. The central figure is Charles VII, who is seated on a high-backed throne. The king's twelve-year-old son is on his right, occupying a low chair that a surviving
assiette
, or seating plan, specifically describes as one foot high. Immediately in front of the king, and a few steps lower, are the chancellor and the king's constable, representing the law and the military. The pair are seated in armchairs “one just as high as the other.” There are no other chairs. Arranged on the king's right and left are the leading members of the nobility and the Church, who sit on benches along the wall (being able to lean against the wall may have been considered a privilege). The members of parliament and lesser dignitaries occupy benches on descending tiers. The seating arrangement was strictly hierarchical, one's importance denoted by tier height and distance from the king. At the bottom of the social pyramid are several lawyers and legal clerks who are seated on stools, or are sprawled—unceremoniously—on the floor. The crowd of onlookers is standing.

As Fernand Braudel observed, the poor had few possessions. One looks in vain for side chairs in Pieter Brueghel the Elder's sixteenth-century paintings of peasant life—there are only stools and benches, and precious few of those. Ordinary folk mostly sit on whatever is at hand: stools, chests, upturned buckets, or just the ground. The rediscovery of the side chair took a long time. “Fashion evolved, but in slow motion,” wrote Braudel of that period. “The expense occasioned by renovation and refurnishing was enormous; more important, production possibilities remained limited.” The last was critical, for despite the delicate carvings of linen fold panels and tracery, medieval joinery was relatively crude and incapable of producing the curving shapes required for true sitting comfort.

The choir stall is a representative piece of medieval sitting furniture. The overhead canopy is imposing, but the straight back and a hard flat seat offer rudimentary comfort to the sitter. The “wainscot chair” is a domestic offshoot, a boxy armchair with an elaborate carved back. Such furniture was made by the same carpenters who built houses; no wonder that the chairs exhibit an architectural solidity. Heavy and massive, they usually stood immobile against the wall.

The emergence of side chairs in the late sixteenth century was enabled by prosperity and stimulated by the growth of domesticity and the desire for light, portable furniture that would allow intimate occasions of the sort that François Boucher would later record in
Le déjeuner
. No technological breakthrough was required. The first side chairs were basically four-legged stools with the two rear legs extended to support a backrest. Simple as they were, such chairs demanded more sophisticated carpentry. As furniture-making techniques became widespread, the division between carpenters, who simply pegged wood together, and joiners, who were experts at attaching wood with complicated joints, was formalized; in London, the association of joiners received a royal charter in 1571.

By the early seventeenth century, side chairs were common throughout Europe. These chairs were almost always padded. The invention of upholstery, which took place in the early 1600s, is an important moment in the history of the chair.
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Leather or fabric was stretched over the chair's wooden frame, and stuffed with marsh grass, down, or animal hair—usually horsehair. The problem was how to keep the stuffing from shifting under use. The two most common solutions were to quilt the upholstery into sewn compartments, or to add buttons or tufts, which were stitched completely through the upholstery and kept the stuffing in place. Padded seats could be given a pronounced domelike shape that became an important part of the chair's design. In time, upholsterers became skilled in shaping the padding and produced chairs and sofas that were almost entirely padded.