From all the furniture items, the chair might be the paramount one. While the majority of other pieces (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be looked upon here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to developed pieces for example 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 clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic creation; it is also an indicator of social place. In the historical royal courts there were plain differences between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior standing, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be utilised for a number of different makes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds have been changed to suit to differing human needs. Due to its significant importance with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when being used. While it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the different parts of the chair are given labels according to the areas of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary role of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated generally on how suitably it does fulfill this practical job. Within the structure of the chair, the maker is bound with some static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extended over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that had individual chair types, expressive of the principal endeavour in the spheres of craft and design. Within these such societies, a mention must 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 result of expert craft, are today seen from tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs designed not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular design was made. There appeared to be no particular differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The real change was in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made for an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the type continued during much later points. But the stool then also was designed for the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were worked out of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, appeared somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient specimen still around but as found in a variety of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs would be shown. These unique legs were most likely crafted of bent wood and were in that case put under extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were overtly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; some models of seated Romans are evidence of a thicker and which appear to be a kind of less intricately constructed klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular brands of marked individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be traced as long as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of drawings and paintings had been preserved, with images of the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and their furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing likeness to designs of past chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is designed both with or without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, though, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms for the purpose of conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). The three limbs were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a particular ability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top it off) represent a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs probably were kept for the senior people in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and fine 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 forms—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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 versions 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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