Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be paramount. While most other objects (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds for example the bench and sofa, which should 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 only a physical support and aesthetic creation; it was also symbolic of social placement. In the historical royal courts there were significant signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. Since the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In its furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a range of various models. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote 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 to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds has adapted to fit to evolving human needs. Due to its close link with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when being used. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is seen best and evaluated by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the different elements of a chair are labeled corresponding to the elements of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear job of the chair is to support the human body, its value is tested firstly by how completely it does measure up to this practical role. In the manufacture of a chair, the maker is restricted within some static law and principal measurements. Within these rules, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair is an epoch of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that made significant chair types, expressions of the leading object in the industries of craft and creativity. Out of these peoples, a mention 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 result of careful make, are seen 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 would have four legs designed similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular structure was crafted. There appears to be no particular change in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The main change was in the level of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed for an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the type continued during much later periods of time. But the stool also then was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be seen, 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 in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are made out of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was seen again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still extant but found in a large amount of pictorial material. The most recognisable is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs are displayed. These odd legs were probably manufactured with bent wood and were therefore subjected to huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely strong and were overtly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; designs of models of seated Romans offer evidence of a more heavyset and apparently slightly crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of considerable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be followed as well as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of drawings and artworks was preserved, displaying the interior and exteriors of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to designs of past chairs.
Like in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was seen both with or without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles are marginally curved above the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). Together, the three parts had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of the back splat later had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would only to a particular capability embolden corner joints (and then were loose to top that off) indicate a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were kept only for senior people, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in 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 unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found 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. Though this kind of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of 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 of styles—that was, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of rather thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer designs would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and won favour in several 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 popular and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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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