What Came first, Man or Chair?

The Ultimate Essence of Chair

What are the origins of the chair and what truly IS a chair? What is the purpose of a chair? What makes a chair a chair? What is chair-ness? Is there such a thing?

The human has a natural tendency to squat and in such position the chair fits in the outline of the negative space. With this said, the origins of the chair may really be an extension of the human body, created out of need rather than want. From this, the idea of a table is born, also. Because we sit, there is a chair, because we have chairs, we have tables, and because there are tables, we sit in a community, and so on. Furniture may have taken a few hundred years to develop into the modern idea, but this sense of community has always been concurrent in human development. In the very beginning, the vehicle was the campfire, where people would gather around, if originally for just the sake of needing warmth, this served as the social construct of bringing people together and in such a setting, there was an exchange of stories, a sense of bonding, the idea of family and community grew from this simple thing. Whether the fire was set inside a single-family home, a cave or lodge, or it was a giant bonfire in the middle of a group tents or a small village. These are the sociological ties a chair, furniture, has.

Now let’s go back to original idea of the chair being born out of need. In the “bonfire” days, natural surroundings yielded things like rocks, tree stumps, and fallen logs. The idea of a stool can be the core essence of a chair where its primary function is to support the body weight, to take the strain off the legs. There is no back support but that is only a secondary need. The stool was the precursor of the chair, this was a concept that may have been around since the beginning of man, whether it was conscious or not. The way a human’s joints are connected in their natural range of motion and angle of bend, man is predisposed to eventually find this seated position, for one cannot stay on their feet forever. Therefore, regardless of intellectual development in the Cro-Magnon days, basic animal instinct would lead one to find objects found in nature, like rocks and flat planes, or tree logs, to “sit” on and find relief, perhaps after a long day’s journey or hunting. When looked at from this aspect, the idea of the “chair” is now nothing new or innovative; it has simply changed and developed greatly since its origins (which cannot be exactly known). It has been approached over the years, over the decades to either be built more sensibly, or cleverly or economically. How does one really reinvent the chair?

In its simple form, what is needed for a chair is a series of three connected planes, a vertical one to support our back, a horizontal one below waist-level to support our weight, and one more vertical to support the height of our legs at a bent angle. This forms a very basic zig-zag shape in profile. From this basic outline or skeleton, this is where creativity can begin. However, the pure purpose of a chair is to function as a chair—aesthetic is completely secondary. Like finding a way to get to a certain destination or achieving a certain level, and then finding a more efficient or creative way of getting there. If a chair looks like a chair, has a conventional shape to it, but cannot physically bear the weight of a person—is it still a chair? Does that not completely defeat the purpose of a chair? Is it an imposter? A mimic or an empty container of what would be a chair?

This brings me back to high school when a very enthusiastic Mrs. Baldwin was trying demonstrate to our Seminar English class the concepts of Taoism and Plato (I don’t know why these two things are meshed together in my head): Lifting a chair onto the table and gesturing to it, she exclaimed “This is not a chair, this a copy of the essence of the ideal chair! This is not a chair, but the negative outline of what should be a chair!” (If that doesn’t sound correct, please blame my spotty memory, not the competence of my high school educators) I never looked at a chair in the same way again.

A chair, stool, and bench: all pieces of furniture made to sit on, and are sometimes wrongly interchanged, but are they just different forms of the same thing? They all share the common idea of a “seat.” Let’s think of these in light of geometric terms and defining them by a point. In mathematical terms, a point is an exact location in space, it has no length, width or depth. A line is a set of consecutive points that extend infinitely in both directions. A plane is a set of points on a 2D surface that extend infinitely in all directions.

Geometrically speaking, let’s say the seat is a point and it can extend to any set length like a line segment or a ray. If your seat is the point, then a bench is a line segment, with two definite ends, accommodating any number of seats between, or it is chaise lounge that can be a ray with an indefinite length, or a rocking chair with its range of motion following the limits of an angle. A chair can be a series of points and planes and lines in a 2D form, and in the 3D realm, it is a series of planes intersecting, forms axes. And from these axes, you can get rotations like the rocking chair or swings and hammocks (points, or “seats” at a fixed distance from an axis).
This is a way for approaching the design of a chair, simply relating meaning or relevance to the universe and nature. Or this is for people who need to see the logic or rationale of the structure of a chair. But for the more philosophical, more intangible mind, let’s take it further.
Then when does a plane, like the ground, become a seat? Is that when a section of the plane is cut out to form the seat of a chair? Are legs created when one vertical plane is multiplied for ample support?

At this point, what does a human become? Can the chair exist without the human body? The human can certainly exist without the chair, albeit a little less comfortable. The chair is then innately tied to that of human need and function. The presence of the chair warrants the very existence of man, or the nearest being that would require such an object. Attempt to be as objective as possible and consider questions might arise if we found a chair-shaped object on an otherwise uninhabited planet. Subjective connotation leads us to assume it is a chair. Then one can really evaluate what constitutes a chair or what properties do these visual parts imply? E.g. seat, legs, backing, etc. And why could it not function upside-down, or sideways? What indicates that it bears weight? At that point if we determine it is like a chair, as we know it, and thus functions as one, there would be an immediate query to the life forms that created it or used it. Actually, this association would happen much faster, most likely within seconds of each other: “Chairs? Humans!” Acknowledging if not humans, then creatures intelligent and particular enough to see the need of a chair beyond just a rock or a tree stump.

Therefore, I conclude that the ultimate Essence of the Chair is Man. In a way that some people state that God exists because the Bible exists, then jokingly rebuke it with the fact that Men wrote the Bible. This is the idea that Man will create forms that extend from himself, out of necessity, even want (No jokes about women and ribs please). Focus on the idea of a negative space: it is a void where something could or should be—where something once was or is waiting to be filled. This idea of a chair is beyond just a stool, and therefore is an object created out of an idea. It existed from the moment the first human “thought” about it, carving this negative space in the shape of a chair, in alignment with even Taoist views, it is now a chair because it is the chair that would fill that negative shape, that need, that void. This may be an extension of René Decartes’s “Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am)”--I think (of chair), therefore I am (chair). The chair exists, because man created it, therefore the essence of the chair is ultimately man.