Of all the furniture items in living and dining rooms and kitchens – perhaps none speaks of design preference and individual taste quite so much as the humble chair – the place we park our bottoms!
But the chair wasn’t always quite so humble. Indeed, the clues to its previously exalted status are in the different meanings of the word chair.
For thousands of years, chairs were highly prized items reserved for people of great importance. Chairs were used to indicate status, dignity and general hierarchy rather than for ordinary use. So the word “Chair” is still used to convey authority and importance as in Chairman / Chairperson etc.
In fact, chairs didn’t become commonplace until the 16th century. Until then, chests, benches and stools were used in everyday life. Again, the clue is in the name as in “back benches” in the house of Commons – not being as important as the Speaker’s Chair etc.
Some of the earliest records of chairs come from ancient Egypt where chairs were items indicating wealth and importance – made of ebony with ivory, or of carved and gilded wood and covered with material with intricately woven patterns etc.
In China, chairs seem to have made their debut during the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD) and by the 12th century, sitting on the floor had all but ended in the country unlike most of its Asian neighbours.
In Europe, the chair continued to be an exalted seat until the Renaissance period, around the 14th–17th centuries, when it gradually began to be a more ordinary household item.
But it was only with the advance of materials technology in the 20th Century that chairs began to be exciting again as they were made from metal and other materials – and in many different shapes etc.
So the next time you relax into a massage chair at the airport, don’t just lie there – reflect on how far the chair has come over the centuries!
