Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair could be primary. While most other objects (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to further types like the bench and 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 obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic artwork; it is also semiotic of social status. Within the Medieval royal courts there were clear signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to use a stool. From the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior position, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In a furniture form, the chair is employed for a wealth of different forms. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes have adapted to match to differing human uses. From its unique link with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when used. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and evaluated by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the various areas of the chair are labeled as the areas of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original role of the chair is to support our body, its worth is tested principally from how completely it fulfills this practical job. Within the structure of a chair, the chair maker is limited in some static law and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that created significant chair shapes, expressions of the highest object in the areas of skill and creativity. Out of these peoples, special note should 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of expert scheme, are now a finding from tombs. The first one of these 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 an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular form was obtained. There was in our understanding no significant differentiation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The simple change lies in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was created to be an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this chair existed during much later days. But the stool also was created as the use of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be seen, 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 were made in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made with wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came again but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still in form but as seen in a variety of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs are shown. These unique legs were considered to be manufactured from bent wood and were therefore bore great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very solid and were visibly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; a number of models of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and which appear to be a slightly less delicately designed klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were revived during the Classicist era. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of notable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be charted as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of images and works of art had been kept, with images of the interiors and outside of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are some chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to styles of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles were lightly curved over the arms so as to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its chairback). The three sections were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of a back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a limited ability embolden corner joints (and were loose to top that off) represent an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were allowed only for senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks display a type 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 tiny pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same era, had 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 kind of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive 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 developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of rather thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier 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
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 versions 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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