Out of all furniture objects, the chair may be paramount. While the majority of other items (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further types such as a bench or sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic item; it is also a symbol of social standing. From the old royal courts there were clear differences between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior position, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
In its furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a variety of different makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has designated particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have changed to fit to changing human desires. Because of its particular link with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when used. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and judged best with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the different elements of the chair were labeled likened to the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first job of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is valued generally from how fully it fulfills this practical role. In the manufacture of the chair, the chair maker is limited within the static rules and principal measurements. Inside these restrictions, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed societies that created significant chair shapes, as expressions of the principal craft in the areas of handling and design. From those societies, a note can be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of masterful design, were seen from tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs structured akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was obtained. There was to our understanding no noteworthy change in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The real change lies in the complexity of ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was developed to be an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this stool persevered during much later periods. But the stool also existed in the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The plain make of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, can be seen somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient item still extant but from a large amount of pictorial evidence. The archetype is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those could be displayed. These creative legs were considered to have been crafted of bent wood and were thus bore extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super durable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; quite a few statues of seated Romans are examples of a thicker and in appearance slightly less delicately built klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos design is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special forms of considerable individuality in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of drawings and works of art was preserved, detailing the interior and outside of Chinese homes and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to styles of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was designed both with or without arms though never missing its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms for the purpose of sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Together, the three sections are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of this back splat then had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a limited capability stabilise corner joints (and then were loose as a result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were reserved for older people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been held together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of rather thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive examples might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite in many parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).
Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became popular and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
During the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.
In cheaper brands of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.
Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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