Proportion every step so that twice its height plus its depth equals the length of a natural pace on the level: two feet, or 24 pouces.
2 r + g = 24 pouces ≈ 65 cm (modern practice: 60–66 cm)
The size of a chair
Make a chair about 20 inches wide in front, the seat about 17 inches deep and the seat frame 17 inches high, the whole back about 3 feet 1 inch high; a sofa 6 to 7 feet long, about 30 inches deep and its seat 14 inches high.
chair: 20 in wide × 17 in deep, seat 17 in high, back 3 ft 1 in; sofa: 6–7 ft long × 30 in, seat 14 in
The Guide gives general dimensions for each kind of piece, to be varied with the room and the purpose. Chippendale’s Director gives a chair a little larger in front, as the chairs of the 1750s were; the surviving chairs of both bear the sizes out.
Related rules
Hold that the beauty of the orders comes from fixed proportions that please by nature, as consonances do in music; where the ancients differ, the differences answer to circumstances such as distance and height.
Make the architrave round a door or window as wide as a sixth part of the opening’s breadth, and dress the openings of the principal floor more richly than those of the storeys above and below, with a frieze and cornice, and on the grandest a pediment.
architrave = ⅙ × width of the light
On the angles of a pediment set acroteria as high as half the tympanum, and on its apex one an eighth higher.
side acroteria = ½ tympanum height; middle = side × 9⁄8
In a spacious dining room, stand the sideboard on the end wall, 5½ to 7 feet long, 3 feet high and 28 to 32 inches deep, and set a pedestal at each end of it carrying a vase: the one pedestal lined to warm the plates, the other a cupboard, the vases holding water or knives.
Make the furniture after the antique: the chair as the Greek klismos, its broad back curved to the sitter and its legs swept out like sabres; the couch with one scrolled end; tables on a central pillar and claws or on lion monopodia; and give each piece the plain, broad surfaces and the ornament of the vases and reliefs it is drawn from.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The size of a chair”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/chair-dimensions. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.