Amish Originals Furniture Co.: Dining Chair Stories

It isn't so much what's on the table that matters, as what's on the chairs. -William S. Gilbert

Generations upon generations ago, before farming and before villages, we slept under the stars, warmed by an opened fire, and longed for something to sit on.

And, through human innovation, for thousands of years, we sat on... three-legged wooden stools.

Through empires, eras, and ages, informed by migration, culture, and technology, seating design ebbed and flowed along with civilization.

As tools and technology progressed, woodworking became an artisan skill with standards and techniques passed-on through the ages. With skilled craft, chairs became more thought-out, more expressive, more comfortable, and... something only for the privileged.

Just a few hundred years ago, the dining chair, as we know it, started to become a regular part of everyday life.  Historians credit the French with advancing dining chair design, creating a comfortable four-legged piece of free standing furniture, with back and shoulder support, that could accommodated seating at a table or desk.

The new every day dining chair designs debuted in the American colonies in Philadelphia.  America embraced the dining chair and American cabinetmakers began to craft chairs in New York and New England, as well, adapting European style to American needs.

As the United States progressed, American chair makers, utilizing indigenous materials and responding to American needs, continued to improve chair design producing the uniquely American Shaker Ladderback chair and Arts and Crafts movement-inspired Mission style chair.

As "the good bones" of basic chair design have pretty much remained the same for centuries, wood dining chairs have become a form of artistic expression as well as a staple in the American home.

History Tidbits

If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

▪ Romans sat on a foldable X-shaped chair called a curule. Curules were very similar to modern folding lawn chairs.

▪ Early chair artisan skills and standards developed in Asia and Egypt.  These skills, like dovetailing and mortise & tenon joinery, have been passed on over thousands of years and have yet to be improved upon.

▪ During the renaissance, chairs ceased to be for the privileged and became more affordable and more of a form of expression.

▪ Also during the Renaissance, chairs became more open, like modern dining chairs to accommodate the billowy material and designs in women’s fashions.

▪ The Windsor style chair we know today was originally called a Philadelphia chair.

▪ The original chair style for the Windsor chair was designed as a 3-legged chair, often fastened to the wall, to hold the full weight of a knight in armor.

▪ The founders of America sat on Windsor chairs in the 2nd Continental Congress.

▪ A chair leg with a distinct animal design like a claw clasping a ball, lion’s paw, or deer (or goat) hoof is called a cabriole leg.

▪ French king Louis XIV actually regulated a chair hierarchy for French citizens based on status: arm chairs, back support chairs, stools, hassocks. People in the king’s presence could only sit on stools.

▪ As far back as the Neolithic Era, archaeologists have found building sites that suggest the presence of chairs and benches.

▪ Woodworking skills like sophisticated joints, veneering, cushioning, folding capabilities, curving wood, and inlays existed as far back as 1352 B.C.

▪ The turns of the spindles and molding of the seats of early American Windsor chairs were region specific and made from indigenous woods.

To read more online:

Random History: From Benches to Barstools

Collectors' Weekly: The Windsor

Fine Woodworking: A Short History of Chairs