Of all furniture items, the chair could be paramount. While the majority of other pieces (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further items including the bench or sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic creation; it is also a signifier of social status. In the old royal courts there were important signifiers between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to utilise a stool. Since the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior rank, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In a furniture creation, the chair encompasses a variety of various makes. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during 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 have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has designated particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has adapted to suit to evolving human requirements. Due to its particular connection with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when utilised. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly tested by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the different areas of the chair were labeled likened to the parts of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal role of a chair is to support the body, its worth is judged basically from how completely it measures up to this practical function. In the creation of a chair, the carpenter is restricted with certain static rules and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an era of several thousand years. There are societies that held iconic chair forms, expressive of the topmost task in the areas of skill and art. From those peoples, particular 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful make, are now seen from findings made in tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs designed as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular construction was created. There appeared to be no particular change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The main variation lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was crafted for an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that type stayed around for much later periods of time. But the stool also was designed for the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came again somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient specimen still existing but in a variety of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be seen. These strange legs were understood to be created from bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely solid and were overtly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; some models of seated Romans display designs of a denser and apparently kind of less delicately constructed klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist era. The klismos style can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special types of notable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as long as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and paintings was protected, detailing the interior and exteriors of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to styles of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with or without arms but never missing a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one image, however, the stiles had been lightly curved by the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). The three sections are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the Chinese back splat had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a particular limit support corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) are an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were only for the senior family members, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of these furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic issues are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but are mortised into 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 signature on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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