Out of all furniture objects, the chair might be the imperative one. While most of the other pieces (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to developed makes for example the bench and 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 obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic object; it is historically symbolic of social place. From the past royal courts there were plain distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as iconic of superior position, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As a furniture construction, the chair can be employed for a range of various purposes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms has been adapted to conform to changing human uses. For its significant association with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when in use. Though it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly evaluated by a person using it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various elements of the chair have been named according to the names of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental purpose of your chair is to support a body, its value is judged primarily by how completely it does measure up to this practical function. Within the manufacture of a chair, the maker is bound within some static rules and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There were cultures that had made individual chair types, as expressions of the highest object in the areas of handling and aesthetics. From these such peoples, special note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert craft, are today known from discoveries made in tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular form was made. There was from our understanding no notable variation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The only variation existed in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was crafted as an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool the type stayed til much later periods. But the stool also was made for the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are worked from wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was seen again somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, made from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still existing but as found in a wealth of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them would be shown. These curving legs were most likely to have been manufactured of bent wood and were therefore subjected to great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely strong and were overtly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; some models of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and are a rather less delicately constructed klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were brought back in the Classicist period. The klismos influence is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special kinds of profound individuality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and artworks was protected, displaying the inside and outside of Chinese households and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing likeness to images of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been constructed both with and without arms but always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms so as to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). All three limbs are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of a back splat exercised an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would only to a particular extent reinforce corner joints (and are loose in the bargain) indicate an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs most likely were allowed only for the senior persons in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for 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 evidenced in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, 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 clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer chairs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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