From all the furniture forms, the chair may be the primary one. While most other objects (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds including a bench and 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 evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic craft; it historically is a symbol of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were plain signifiers between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior dignity, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher platform.
As its furniture form, the chair can be employed for a range of various purposes. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (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 make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds has been perfected to fit to evolving human needs. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when utilised. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly judged by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the several limbs of the chair are labeled according to the names of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental purpose of the chair is to support our body, its worth is evaluated primarily by how well it measures up to this practical use. Within the creation of the chair, the carpenter is limited for certain static regulations and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that held iconic chair shapes, seen of the principal endeavour in the areas of skill and aesthetics. In those peoples, particular note can 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 construct of skilled scheme, are seen from tomb discoveries. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular form was crafted. There appears to be no noteworthy difference in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The simple variation exists in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created as an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool that chair continued until much later points. But the stool also was made as the task of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are made of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, made 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 known of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient item still around but as seen in a trove of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which would be visible. These creative legs were presumed to be executed with bent wood and were probably put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super solid and were clearly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; quite a few models of seated Romans are designs of a heavier and in appearance kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special forms of marked iconicism of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be followed as far as in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and paintings had been preserved, detailing the inside and exteriors of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing resemblance to representations of previous chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was designed both with and without arms although always with its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles are lightly curved over the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, the three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of the back splat had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and are loose additionally) represent a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were reserved for elderly people, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same period, 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 interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes 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 an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious 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 of styles—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat adheres 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 made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. 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; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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 popularised 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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