Of all furniture needs, the chair may be primary. While most of the other forms (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be looked upon here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed makes such as the bench and sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
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 an aesthetic item; it historically is a signifier of social rank. At the old 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 use a stool. In the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior position, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture purpose, the chair holds a number of different models. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical 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). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have been perfected to match to different human desires. Due to its unique connection with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when in use. Although it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged by a person using it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the different areas of the chair are given names as the areas of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear role of your chair is to support your body, its worth is judged primarily by how fully it does fulfill this practical role. In the build of a chair, the designer is limited under particular static rules and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that had made iconic chair shapes, as expressions of the highest task in the spheres of technique and aesthetics. In these such civilisations, a 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of expert design, are found from findings made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs structured like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was created. There was from our knowledge no particular variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The real difference exists in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed as an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool the form stayed until much later points. But the stool also then was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be seen, 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 are in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were created from wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappears somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient specimen still extant but as found in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place 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 those are seen. These unique legs were understood to be executed out of bent wood and were as such had to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very strong and were visibly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; evidence of statues of seated Romans show chairs of a thicker and in appearance rather more crudely built klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were brought back in the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special kinds of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be traced as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of images and works of art had been kept, displaying the insides and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to styles of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was designed both with or without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles are marginally curved by the arms in order to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). The three limbs are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the Chinese back splat later had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that merely to a limited capability reinforce corner joints (and then are loose as a result) signify a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved for the senior individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings project a style of chair with a relatively brusque 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 little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed in engravings of the interior of affluent 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 where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up against 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 of styles—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive chairs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 commonly known 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 versions 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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