From all the furniture forms, the chair may be of most importance. While the majority of other forms (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be looked upon here in the common sense, from stool to throne to developed chairs like a bench and sofa, which may be regarded 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 intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic artwork; it can also be a signifier of social place. At the Medieval royal courts there were social signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. In the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher platform.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a variety of various models. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in 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 can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have adapted to fit to evolving human desires. Because of its significant relationship with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being used. Although it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly tested with a person using it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several limbs of a chair have been labeled like the elements of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original role of your chair is to support the body, its credit is tested basically on how suitably it does fulfill this practical role. In the manufacture of a chair, the designer is bound by some static laws and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that held iconic chair shapes, seen of the leading task in the arenas of technique and design. In these such civilisations, special mention can 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 masterful scheme, are a finding from tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs shaped akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular form was made. There was apparently no notable change from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The simple difference exists in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured to be an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool this kind continued for much later periods of time. But the stool then was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be observed, 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 in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were made with wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was then seen some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient item still around but as found in a trove of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be visible. These curved legs were considered to be crafted in bent wood and were likely to have been needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely stable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; a number of casts of seated Romans display evidence of a heavier and are a slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist era. The klismos design is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be followed as long as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of sketches and artworks has been kept safe, displaying the interior and exterior of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting likeness to pictures of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been designed both with or without arms however always having a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, though, the stiles had been marginally curved by the arms for the purpose of conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Each of the three areas are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a restricted limit reinforce corner joints (and then were loose to top that off) indicate an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs probably were reserved for senior people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decorative elements are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been affixed by either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings project a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is displayed in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer items can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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 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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