Out of all furniture items, the chair might be the imperative one. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the common sense, from stool to throne to complex items including the bench and sofa, which should be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic item; it can also be semiotic of social place. Within the old royal courts there were significant distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. From the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior dignity, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a number of various purposes. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from 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.
Modern day living has designated unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes has perfected to match to evolving human uses. Because of its unique relationship with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being utilised. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and tested by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the different parts of the chair have been given names according to the elements of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear role of the chair is to support the body, its credit is valued principally by how well it fulfills this practical job. In the design of the chair, the builder is limited for certain static laws and principal measurements. Under these limits, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had distinctive chair shapes, seen of the leading work in the areas of skill and design. In these civilisations, individual mention 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of masterful make, are found from discoveries made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs formed not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular design was crafted. There was from our knowledge no particular difference between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The real variation lied in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed for an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool this form continued during much later days. But the stool also was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the form of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came up some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient item still existing but as seen from a trove of pictorial evidence. The most recognisable is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them can be shown. These curved legs were possibly manufactured of bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely strong and were particularly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; evidence of casts of seated Romans offer evidence of a heavier and apparently somewhat less delicately crafted klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were brought back within the Classicist era. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular types of profound individuality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be charted as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of images and works of art had been preserved, showing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing similarity to styles of previous chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with and without arms but never missing a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles had been slightly curved over the arms so as to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). The three limbs had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the Chinese back splat had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (and then are loose to top that off) indicate a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were reserved for older persons in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been held together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Artworks show a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious 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 was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of quite thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more expensive chairs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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 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 products 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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