From all the furniture pieces, the chair could be of most importance. While the majority of other forms (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is viewed here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to further makes for example the 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 obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it historically is an indicator of social ranking. From the past royal courts there were plain signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. During the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior standing, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a number of different makes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs used for birth (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. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes has adapted to match to differing human desires. Because of its unique association with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when being utilised. Whereas it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and tested by a person using it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the individual areas of the chair are given labels according to the parts of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal role of your chair is to support a human body, its credit is judged principally by how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of a chair, the designer is limited under the static rules and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an era of several thousand years. There were cultures that had made iconic chair types, as seen of the highest endeavour in the industries of craft and creativity. Out of those societies, individual 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of masterful make, are found from discoveries made in tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs designed as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular construction was obtained. There was to our knowledge no particular variation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The simple variation lied in the complex ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool the chair stayed until much later periods of time. But the stool then also played the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are worked from wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still extant but as seen from a wealth of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them could be shown. These curved legs were thought to be executed from bent wood and were probably put under huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very stable and were clearly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; designs of statues of seated Romans show evidence of a thicker and which appear to be a kind of less intricately designed klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were seen again during the Classicist era. The klismos style is seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of marked individuality around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as well as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of images and works of art had been preserved, showing the inside and exteriors of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing likeness to pictures of previous chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms though never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms in order to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, the three parts were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of this back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that just to a particular capability reinforce corner joints (and are loose to top that off) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved for older individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks 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 between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise 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 of them have wood of quite thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive items can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. 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; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 popular 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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