Of all furniture needs, the chair might be the most important. While most other items (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds like a bench and sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it is historically an indicator of social status. At the historical royal courts there were social signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to sit on a stool. During the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior status, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture creation, the chair can be utilised for a variety of various makes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes has adapted to conform to changing human desires. Because of its close association with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when utilised. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and judged best by a person using it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the different elements of the chair are given labels as the areas of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental purpose of a chair is to support a human body, its credit is evaluated firstly for how fully it does measure up to this practical job. In the structure of the chair, the designer is bound in particular static regulation and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had individual chair forms, as seen of the topmost object in the areas of skill and aesthetics. Within those peoples, individual note must 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled design, are today a finding from findings made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs structured akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular form was obtained. There appears to be no noteworthy variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The simple change lied in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured for an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool the form stayed til much later days. But the stool also was designed for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can now be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are made of wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappeared but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient object still extant but as seen in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs were shown. These strange legs were considered to be executed from bent wood and were probably subjected to great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were particularly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans display chairs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a kind of less delicately constructed klismos. Both designs, the light or the heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos style can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special types of marked uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and works of art has been kept, showing the inside and outer parts of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing likeness to representations of ancient chairs.
As in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair was designed both with and without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles are delicately curved over the arms to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). Together, all three sections are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat later had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a limited ability embolden corner joints (and are loose into the bargain) indicate a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved for older members of the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been fixed together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of quite thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket designs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular in large 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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