Out of all furniture needs, the chair might be primary. While many other pieces (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be viewed here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to developed types such as a bench and sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic piece; it is also an indicator of social standing. In the Medieval royal courts there were significant distinctions between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. During the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior standing, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As its furniture creation, the chair can be used for a number of different purposes. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and 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.
Modern day living has demanded particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have adapted to conform to differing human needs. From its close link with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when being used. Although it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly evaluated with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various areas of a chair were named as the areas of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is valued generally for how well it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the design of the chair, the carpenter is restricted by the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covered a period of several thousand years. There were societies that made unique chair forms, expressions of the leading task in the arenas of craft and design. Out of such societies, particular mention 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of careful make, are found from tomb discoveries. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular construction was crafted. There appeared to be no marked variation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The main difference lied in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made for an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that stool stayed for much later points. But the stool also was made as the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were made of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, appeared at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of those is the folding stool, from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient object still in form but seen in a large amount of pictorial items. The iconic kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them would be shown. These strange legs were thought to have been crafted with bent wood and were therefore subjected to a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very durable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; designs of casts of seated Romans offer chairs of a thicker and apparently kind of less intricately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were revived in the Classicist era. The klismos influence is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be traced as well as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and artworks has been preserved, showing the insides and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting likeness to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with and without arms however always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, however, the stiles are marginally curved on top of the arms to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). The three parts had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the Chinese back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the result) are a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs presumably were kept only for elderly people, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Artworks display 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 between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same time, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of 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 found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket examples would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any 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 differentiated in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 reknowned 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 brands 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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