From each of the furniture items, the chair might be the imperative one. While most other items (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed types including a bench or sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it can also be a symbol of social hierarchy. In the past royal courts there were important connotations between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As a furniture creation, the chair encompasses a range of various models. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has been evolved to match to evolving human uses. From its particular relationship with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in employ. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the individual areas of the chair were labeled likened to the limbs of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental role of a chair is to support your body, its worth is tested principally by how fully it does fulfill this practical role. In the construction of a chair, the maker is bound within some static legislation and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There are societies that made individual chair shapes, as seen of the topmost work in the areas of craft and aesthetics. From such peoples, particular 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled design, are now seen from tomb findings. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted like those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular structure was obtained. There was apparently no marked variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The general variation exists in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was manufactured to be an easily stored seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that form persisted til much later times. But the stool then existed in the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were worked with wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came up but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient fossil still existing but as seen in a large amount of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those are seen. These odd legs were thought to be manufactured from bent wood and were in that case had to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super durable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; quite a few casts of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and which appear to be a rather more crudely built klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were seen again within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special brands of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be charted as long as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of sketches and works of art has been preserved, showing the interior and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing likeness to images of older chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with and without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one form, though, the stiles had been marginally curved by the arms for the purpose of suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). The three parts were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the back splat had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a restricted limit support corner joints (and then were loose to top that off) indicate a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were kept for senior people in the family, for they were given great esteem.
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 dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with 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 put its signature on the chair. Artworks show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form 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 was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such 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. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and finer examples can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found 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 products 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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