In this second part in our series on the history of chairs we are going to continue with medieval chairs.

Maximianus, who was Roman emperor from 286 to 305, had a chair that now stands in the Cathedral of Ravenna. The chair is made of marble, is round, with a high back, and is carved with figures of saints and scenes from the Gospels and the Adoration of the Magi as well as the flight into Egypt by the Jews and the baptism of Jesus Christ himself. This chair is a truly amazing piece of art and craftsmanship. The smaller pieces of the chair are filled with carvings of animals, birds and flowers.

Another very ancient chair is the Chair Of Dagobert which is now in the Louvre. It is made of bronze and sharpened with a chisel. The chair is of the curule and is supported on legs that are made in the shape of heads and feet of animals. The seat of the chair was probably made of leather but is now totally gone. The age of the seat has been debated for some time now. Viollet-le-Duc dated it to early Merovingian times. It may very well be the oldest curule in existence today.

Of this same type of chair is the famous abbots' chair of Glastonbury. These chairs had the ability to be broken down into pieces when their owners traveled. In time, these chairs eventually acquired arms and a back and yet still retained their ability to be folded up and transported. The most famous of these chairs is the one belonging to Edward I of the 13th century. All subsequent monarchs have been crowned in that chair. The chair was made of oak and covered with gilded gesso which is long gone.

It is evident from these historic examples that these great chairs passed on from ruler to ruler. These were seats of authority and sat either at the ruler's table, by his bed side or on his dais. The seigneurial chair, which is most common in France and The Netherlands, is a very interesting type of chair. It had a very high back and was sometimes covered with a canopy. The lower part of the chair was carved on the sides and in front. The seat was sometimes hinged and closed with a key. A very unique chair indeed.

Historians have noted how we still sit in armed chairs similar to those from this period of time and how we in turn also sit in our so called chair of authority even if we are only common people. They refer to a normal dinner where the head of the household, usually the man, sits at the head of the table. The only difference in most cases is that dining room sets don't have one chair that stands out from the others, though some people will actually go through the trouble of getting a special chair for the head of the table as a symbol of authority. This is more common in the Eastern world than in the West.

In our next article in this series we'll continue with Chinese chairs and the Renaissance.

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Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Chairs
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