From each of the furniture needs, the chair might be of the most importance. While the majority of other items (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes such as the bench or sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic artwork; it is historically symbolic of social hierarchy. In the old royal courts there were plain differences between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to utilise a stool. From the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior dignity, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher level.
In a furniture purpose, the chair encompasses a variety of different models. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has been evolved to fit to growing human uses. From its close association with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when being utilised. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are items inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly judged by a person using it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the several limbs of a chair are given labels as the elements of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first role of your chair is to support our body, its worth is evaluated generally for how well it measures up to this practical role. In the manufacture of the chair, the maker is limited by certain static regulations and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that held iconic chair types, as expressions of the topmost object in the areas of skill and art. From such peoples, special note should 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 upshot of careful craft, are seen from discoveries made in tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed like those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was obtained. There appeared to be no particular change between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The real variation existed in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed as an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool this stool stayed during much later days. But the stool then also existed in the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were formed out of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, also appeared but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient object still extant but as seen in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs could be seen. These odd legs were possibly created of bent wood and were as such subjected to great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very stable and were particularly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; quite a few casts of seated Romans offer designs of a heavier and in appearance rather less intricately built klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were seen again during the Classicist time. The klismos style can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of considerable originality in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be traced as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of images and paintings had been protected, detailing the interior and exterior of Chinese households and the furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing similarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be seen both with and without arms although always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles were slightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). All three parts are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose additionally) indicate a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs presumably were allowed only for elderly individuals, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decorative elements are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive 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 forms—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive designs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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
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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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