A Brief History of Mechanical Furniture and the Morris Recliner Chair

Mechanical furniture like the Morris reclining chair have a long, interesting and well documented history thanks to great designers like William Morris and Gustav Stickley and important design authors like Sigfried Giedion. In these icon’s footsteps dedicated Amish craftsmen still produce mechanical furniture and recreate solid wood Morris chairs. The Amish Morris Chair recliners are still crafted in the hardwood style of Morris and Stickley’s Arts and Crafts Mission furniture.

London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 had been the first publicly recorded display of mechanical furniture. Here designers and industry insiders were first exposed to the convertible furniture arena of compact ship’s furniture and mechanized wheelchairs. Mechanization in the 1800’s was particularly developed for chairs and specifically for chairs that served a specific trade or task. Doctors, dentists and barbers all benefited from these inventions. From haircuts to bloodletting the mechanics of these chairs improved the ability to do business. Appointments were also created for railroad dining cars and sleeping cars. Even American designed office furniture like the “sitting chair” was benefiting from mechanization with turning and tilting features.

The reclining mechanics of the recliner chair first appeared in 1813 but would not be mass-produced for 70 years. Morris and Company began producing a recumbent chair that every furniture catalogue in the early twentieth century began to sell. William Morris was the owner of the Morris and Company firm. Contrary to popular legend he did not design the chair bearing his name.

Gustav Stickley is also credited for adapting a reclining chair in about 1901 that helped further his design career. An interesting fact about the Morris chair is its use of a very simple mechanism to help the chair recline. Morris Chairs recline using a hinged back that is supported by a simple metal rod. The rod is then moved manually from one notch to another and all notches are in a slot that is placed at the back of the arms.

Today we may take for granted the workings we have come to expect in daily lives but furniture designers and historians full understand the value of the evolution of mechanics in furniture design. Sigfried Giedion was a Bohemia-born Swiss historian and critic of architecture. He felt it was important enough to write an entire book on the subject called Mechanization Takes Command focusing on the mechanization of furniture beginning in the mid-1850s. Giedion had a conceptual influence on all American modern furniture designs in the 1950’s and his influence on that era cannot be overstated.