From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be the primary one. While most of the other items (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the common sense, from stool to throne to developed makes like the bench or sofa, which may be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic item; it historically is symbolic of social placement. At the Medieval royal courts there were plain differences between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to sit on a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior dignity, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As a furniture form, the chair is utilised for a number of variations. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have changed to match to changing human uses. From its unique importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being utilised. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and judged with a person using it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the different parts of a chair are given names likened to the names of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original purpose of the chair is to support your body, its value is tested basically by how fully it fulfills this practical function. Within the construction of the chair, the maker is bound in the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extends over a period of several thousand years. There existed societies that had significant chair shapes, as seen of the leading work in the spheres of skill and aesthetics. Out of those societies, special note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful make, are found from findings made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs structured as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular construction was created. There was in our view no marked variation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The general variation exists in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted as an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool the chair stayed til much later periods of time. But the stool then was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be seen, 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 are made in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are worked out of wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came again somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still extant but found in a variety of pictorial evidence. The best known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs would be displayed. These creative legs were most likely to have been executed out of bent wood and were in that case put under huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super strong and were visibly signified.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; some models of seated Romans display chairs of a denser and are a rather less delicately crafted klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were revived during the Classicist era. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular types of marked originality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and paintings has been protected, detailing the interior and outer parts of Chinese houses and their furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing resemblance to images of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair was found both with or without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one design, however, the stiles had been delicately curved above the arms for the purpose of sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). The three limbs were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a limited ability embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the result) signify an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were kept for elderly members of the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The structure and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been held together with 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 in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant 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 form—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes this 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 tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of rather thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more expensive examples might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popularised in large 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 popularised 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 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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