A chair, I have said, is a stool with a back. There is not one chair out of fifty that we find with the back so attached to the seat as to give a maximum of strength. It is usual to make a back leg and one side of the chair-back out of one piece of wood—that is, to continue the back legs up above the seat, and cause them to become the sides of the chair-back. When this is done the wood is almost invariably curved so that the back legs and the chair-back both incline outwards from the seat. There is no objection whatever to the sides of the back and the legs being formed of the one piece, but there is a great objection to either the supports of the back or the legs being formed of cross-grained wood, as much of their strength is thereby sacrificed. Our illustrations (Figs. 27 to 32) will give several modes of constructing chairs such as I think legitimate; but I will ask the reader to think for himself upon the construction of a chair, and especially upon the proper means of giving due support to the back.
I have given, in an axiomatic form, those principles which should guide us in the construction of works of furniture, and endeavoured to impress the necessity of using wood in that manner which is most natural—that is, "working" it with the grain (the manner in which we can most easily work it), and in that way which shall secure the greatest amount of strength with the least expenditure of material. I wish to impress my readers with the importance of these considerations, for they lie at the very root of the successful construction of furniture. If the legs of chairs, or their seat-frames, or the ends or backs of couches, are formed of wood cut across the grain, they must either be thick and clumsy, or weak; but, besides this, the rightly constituted mind can only receive pleasure from the contemplation of works which are wisely formed. Daily contact, as we have before said, with ill-shaped objects may have more or less deadened our senses, so that we are not so readily offended by deformity and error as we might be; yet, happily for us, directly we seek to separate truth from error, the beautiful from the deformed, reason assists the judgment, and we learn to feel when we are in the presence of the beautiful or in contact with the degraded.
My illustrations will show how I think chairs should be constructed. Fig. 26 is essentially bad, although it has traditional sanction, hence I pass it over without further comment. Fig. 27 is in the manner of an Egyptian chair. It serves to show the careful way in which the Egyptians constructed their works. The curved rails against which the back would rest are the only parts which are not thoroughly correct and satisfactory in a wood structure. Were the curved back members metal, the curvature would be desirable and legitimate. The back of this chair, if the side members were connected by a straight rail, would have immense strength (the backs of some of our chairs are of the very weakest), and if well made it is a seat which would endure for centuries. Fig. 28 is a chair of my own designing, in which I have sought to give strength to the back by connecting its upper portion with a strong cross-rail of the frame.
Fig. 29 is a chair slightly altered from one in Mr. Eastlake's work on "Household Taste;" as shown in our illustration, it is a correctly formed work. Fig. 30 is an arm-chair in the Greek style, which I have designed. Fig. 31 is a Lady's chair in the Gothic style; Fig. 32, a lady's chair in early Greek. These I have prepared to show different modes of structure; if the legs are fitted to a frame (the seat-frame), as in the early Greek chair just alluded to, they should be very short, as in this instance, or they must be connected by a frame below the seat, as in Figs. 33 and 34. The best general structure is that in which the front legs pass to the level of the upper surface of the seat.
Fig. 33 is a copy of a chair shown by Messrs. Gillow and Co., of Oxford Street, in the last Paris International Exhibition. In many respects it is admirably constructed. The skeleton brackets holding the back to the seat are very desirable adjuncts to light chairs; so are the brackets connecting the legs with the seat-frame, as these strengthen the entire chair. The manner in which the upper rail of the back passes through the side uprights and is "pinned" is good. The chief, and only important, fault in this chair is the bending of the back legs, involving their being cut against the grain of the wood.
Fig. 31 is a chair from Mr. Talbert's very excellent work on "Gothic Furniture." It shows an admirable method of supporting the back. Fig. 35 I have designed as a high-backed lounging chair. With the view of giving strength to the back, I have extended the seat, and arranged a support from this extension to the upper back-rail, and this extension of the seat I have supported by a fifth leg. There is no reason whatever why a chair should have four legs. If three would be better, or five, or any other number, let us use what would be best.[23]