In today’s society the average person spends eight to twelve hours a day sitting, therefore “the chair is an everyday object with which the human body has an intimate relationship.” The first design of a chair in a stone sculpture from the Cycladian Islands dating back to 2800-2700 B.C. and from this time on, the chair has evolved in every civilization. In this essay I will focus on the Greek klismos chair and how it tells a “social history” as the first democratic chair that everyone sat on and how it has transformed in the evolution of interior design. “The verb “to sit” signifies holding a position of power in many languages.” As stated by Witold Rybczynski in his novel Now I sit me Down from Klismos to Plastic chair: A Natural History, there are two types of people in the world “those who sit on the floor and those who sit on chairs.” Rybczynski
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While most contemporary furniture of today’s time has a precedent from ancient furniture, the klismos chair has remained virtually unchanged from when it was designed many years ago due to its ergonomic ‘perfect’ design. Not seeing much of the klismos chair design after the Greek period, it begins to become prevalent again 2000 years later with the emergence of neoclassicism in the 1800s, when all things classical were popular. (Fig. 3) The chair was reproduced all over the world by cabinet makers in Scandinavia, as well as Karl Fridrich Schinkel, Erik Gunnar Asplund, Josef Frank and American architect Benjamin Latrobe who designed several klismos chairs including one designed for the oval drawing room in the White House. While most of the chairs that these designers created followed the general shape and form of an original klismos, the sabre legs and radical structural influenced Mies van der Rohe’s design of the Barcelona chair. (Fig.
While most contemporary furniture of today’s time has a precedent from ancient furniture, the klismos chair has remained virtually unchanged from when it was designed many years ago due to its ergonomic ‘perfect’ design. Not seeing much of the klismos chair design after the Greek period, it begins to become prevalent again 2000 years later with the emergence of neoclassicism in the 1800s, when all things classical were popular. (Fig. 3) The chair was reproduced all over the world by cabinet makers in Scandinavia, as well as Karl Fridrich Schinkel, Erik Gunnar Asplund, Josef Frank and American architect Benjamin Latrobe who designed several klismos chairs including one designed for the oval drawing room in the White House. While most of the chairs that these designers created followed the general shape and form of an original klismos, the sabre legs and radical structural influenced Mies van der Rohe’s design of the Barcelona chair. (Fig.