Out of all furniture objects, the chair could be the most important. While the majority of other objects (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs including the bench or sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic creation; it was historically a symbol of social standing. Within the Medieval royal courts there were clear differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. During the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior standing, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
In a furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a wealth of various models. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/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.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes have been evolved to conform to different human needs. From its close association with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when utilised. While it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the different parts of the chair are labeled corresponding to the areas of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious job of the chair is to support the body, its value is judged principally from how completely it does fulfill this practical role. In the structure of a chair, the designer is bound in the static regulation and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that held distinctive chair forms, expressions of the topmost object in the arenas of skill and art. Within these such societies, particular note needs to 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 expert scheme, are now found from tomb discoveries. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular construction was created. There was in our understanding no particular change from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The main change was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was manufactured to be an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the kind persevered until much later days. But the stool then also was made for the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are created from wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, can be seen at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of these is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient object still existing but from a wealth of pictorial evidence. The most well known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are shown. These odd legs were most likely to be crafted from bent wood and were probably bore huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super strong and were plainly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek style; some models of seated Romans show examples of a heavier and are a somewhat more crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light or the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist era. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special brands of profound uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be followed as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of sketches and works of art had been kept, showing the interior and exterior of Chinese houses and their furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing familiarity to styles of past chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles had been delicately curved by the arms so as to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Together, all three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the style of the Chinese back splat then had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a particular ability support corner joints (as well as being loose as well) indicate an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were allowed only for the senior persons, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been adjoined with either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Paintings project a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is found in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive examples can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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 commonly known 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 styles 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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