Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be of most importance. While most of the other pieces (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds such as the bench and sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it is also symbolic of social status. At the old royal courts there were clear connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a wealth of different purposes. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes have adapted to match to differing human needs. From its close importance with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when being utilised. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and evaluated by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the different parts of a chair have been named according to the parts of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary purpose of the chair is to support the human body, its value is valued basically for how suitably it fulfills this practical role. In the creation of a chair, the chair maker is limited in particular static law and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over a period of several thousand years. There existed cultures that held distinctive chair shapes, as expressions of the highest work in the industries of craft and aesthetics. In such civilisations, special mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of expert scheme, are now a finding from findings made in tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs structured not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was obtained. There was to all appearances no significant variation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The simple change existed in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was crafted as an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this form existed til much later periods of time. But the stool then also was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were worked of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, is seen again somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient specimen still extant but as seen in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs were shown. These creative legs were understood to be crafted from bent wood and were therefore subjected to a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very stable and were plainly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek design; quite a few casts of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a kind of less intricately built klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special kinds of considerable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be tracked as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of images and artworks has been kept, showing the inside and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a number of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting familiarity to images of older chairs.
As in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is constructed both with or without arms however never missing a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, though, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms for the purpose of suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). Together, all three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of this back splat then had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a particular ability reinforce corner joints (and then were loose additionally) indicate a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved only for the senior persons in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been affixed by either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a 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 forms—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of relatively thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer examples might be further embellished with intricately 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; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised 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 well-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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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