Massey - Chair

The chair is such a common, everyday object in the modern world. In the West we take it for granted that we can sit to eat in the public space of a caf or restaurant, sit to work at the computer or to relax in the domestic setting of home. So the chair is a ubiquitous object, used extensively for our individual comfort, for staking out territory, for displaying power, for signifying the designers presence or the craftworkers skills. But it is the chairs taken-for-grantedness that makes it such a fascinating object to deconstruct and account for. Like any cultural construction, this unassuming piece of furniture has a complex history and set of meanings. No other object characterizes the impact of modernity with such clarity. No other object offers the designer such an infinite range of possibilities to create an object that will be so intimately close to a strangers body. This book sets out to scratch beneath the surface of the chair, to find out what lies beyond the textile upholstery or the plastic seat, the leather-covered squab or the woven cane support.

Anatomically, our bodies are not particularly suited to sitting on a chair; sitting on the ground is a better option for our health and for our backs. And a sizeable proportion of the worlds population sits on the ground to eat, work and relax. Our happiest times are probably spent not sitting on a chair at a picnic, on the beach, playing on the floor with children, lying on the sofa watching television, or in bed with a lover. This may seem like celebration of a pre-industrial idyll, but scientific evidence points to the damage chairs do to our bodies. But the chair is a vital ordering device in modern, Western culture. It is a structure that holds our body above the ground in a seated position. The chair marks out our place in the modern world. It is a bridge between our body and the surrounding space. The chair acts as crucial cue for performativity. We interact with others in predetermined ways when seated; the chair can guarantee physical proximity or physical distance. Even in cultures that do not privilege the chair, a slow move towards its use is in evidence, stimulated by modernity and globalization. The Western chair has been slowly adopted in Asia and Africa, usually as signifiers of ultimate power and modernity.

Girls sitting and enjoying a picnic, early 20th century.

Before modernity made such an impact in the East, or even in the West, there were very few chairs in existence or in use. The chair was a ceremonial device, used to signify the head of state or church, the lord of the manor or the bishop in his cathedral. Most of the population sat in subservience on benches or the floor. From the eighteenth century onwards, an explosion in consumer culture meant a greater proliferation of chair production and distribution; it became emblematic of the head of the household, rather than the head of state or church. By the Victorian era, all members of the affluent household had access to a chair, from the upholstered needlework chair for the women of the house, to the Windsor chair in the kitchen for the servants. The power of the chair as signifier in recent times has infiltrated the contemporary media, from the Eames chair in Frasier to the dreaded Mastermind chair on BBC television and the chair in the diary room of Big Brother. The chair marks important stages in our lives, not as all-pervasive as the cradle to the grave, but from the high chair to the bath chair is fairly inclusive. This is interjected by the school chair, the high stool in the teenagers coffee bar, the formality of the dining chair, the comfort of the three-piece suite, with hopefully not too many sessions in the dentists chair. Apart from marking stages in our lives, the power of the chair to represent core relationships in particular places remains as strong as ever. The Chair of a meeting sits at the table head; the power relations within homes are marked by chairs. It acts as a crucial signifier of power, and this was the chairs primary and earliest function. Spaces are marked out by the hierarchy of chairs, our place within the lecture room, the church, the restaurant or the pub is indicated by the chair we sit on, or aspire to sit on, and cant. The chair is such a personal, anthropomorphic object. Personal, individual, the chair can communicate the authority of the owner, the sitter, the designer. The directness of touch, the presence of a human body, an aura we can sense, left by the previous sitter.

The chair has a strong anthropomorphic aspect to its structure, with legs, arms, back and seat. So it can represent its designer, or its owner, in their absence. And this is a central feature of the modernist designers relationship with the chair as cultural object. The materiality of the chair can communicate a cultures relationship with nature and issues of sustainability. Also, our bodies have an intimate relationship with the chairs we sit on, the coldness of black leather, the warm comfort of velvet, the familiarity of wood next to our skin. Contemporary designers, artists and architects play with the materiality of the chair form, and juxtapose surprising contrasts of materials wicker and plastic; acid-coloured prints and sleek, black plastic; corrugated cardboard and hardboard. The chair can become a piece of artwork in itself, for example in the work of pop artist Allen Jones and Droog designer Jurgen Bey.