Out of all furniture objects, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other objects (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be used here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed items for example a bench or sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and aesthetic creation; it was historically symbolic of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were significant connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior rank, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher level.
As a furniture form, the chair is employed for a number of variations. There are chairs created 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 past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and 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 lifestyle has designated new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types has perfected to match to differing human requirements. From its significant importance with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when utilised. Though it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly evaluated by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the various elements of a chair are labeled as the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of the chair is to support your body, its worth is valued primarily from how fully it does fulfill this practical role. Within the design of the chair, the builder is limited in some static regulation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that created individual chair shapes, expressive of the principal task in the areas of skill and aesthetics. From those peoples, particular note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of careful scheme, were known from findings made in tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was made. There seemed to be no significant change from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The simple change was in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured as an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool the chair continued til much later points in time. But the stool also was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are created of wood. The plain build of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this kind is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient object still existing but from a trove of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be displayed. These odd legs were thought to be created of bent wood and were as such put under huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very stable and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; quite a few casts of seated Romans display examples of a more heavyset and apparently somewhat less intricately designed klismos. Both kinds, the light and heavy, were brought back in the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound originality around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as well as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and paintings had been kept, detailing the inside and exterior of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing similarity to representations of previous chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair can be seen both with and without arms however always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one image, however, the stiles had been slightly curved over the arms to suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). Together, the three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and then were loose additionally) signify a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were kept only for the senior members of the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings project a design of chair with a relatively crude 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 little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate 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 styles—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits 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 made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 well-known 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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