Out of all furniture items, the chair may be the imperative one. While most other forms (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is regarded here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces including the bench and sofa, which should 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 a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic piece of art; it historically is symbolic of social ranking. Within the past royal courts there were clear signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior dignity, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a range of different models. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs used for birthing (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.
Modern living has derived unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms has adapted to suit to different human requirements. Due to its significant association with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being utilised. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and clearly evaluated by a person using it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the several parts of the chair are given names as the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of the chair is to support a human body, its value is tested basically on how fully it measures up to this practical role. Within the creation of the chair, the designer is restricted by some static legislation and principal measurements. Under these limits, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair is an epoch of several thousand years. There are cultures that created iconic chair forms, as seen of the principal craft in the industries of handling and design. Out of these peoples, particular 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of masterful scheme, are known from tomb discoveries. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs structured not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular form was crafted. There was to all appearances no significant differentiation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The real difference was in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was created for an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool this form continued until much later periods. But the stool also then was designed as the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed from wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then appeared at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient fossil still existing but in a wealth of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were visible. These unique legs were understood to have been crafted from bent wood and were as such had extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek style; designs of models of seated Romans display designs of a denser and which appear to be a rather more crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were revived during the Classicist time. The klismos design is seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special forms of notable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be charted as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of sketches and artworks has been kept, showing the insides and outside of Chinese houses and the furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing familiarity to representations of older chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair was seen both with or without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles were delicately curved by the arms to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Each of the three sections are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the back splat had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only to a particular capability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose into the bargain) signify a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were kept for senior individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The structure and decoration elements are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same era, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, 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 unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of rather thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable 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 became the preference 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 products 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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