Of all furniture forms, the chair might be the primary one. While most other pieces (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to further types for example the bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic item; it is also an indicator of social place. At the historical royal courts there were significant signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior status, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As a furniture form, the chair is utilised for a wealth of different models. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have been perfected to fit to differing human needs. From its particular relationship with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when used. Although it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the different parts of a chair are named likened to the limbs of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear job of the chair is to support a human body, its value is evaluated basically by how completely it fulfills this practical job. Within the structure of a chair, the maker is restricted by particular static laws and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covered an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that created significant chair types, seen of the foremost work in the spheres of skill and design. In these such peoples, a mention 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 items of expert scheme, were a finding from discoveries made in tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular structure was crafted. There seems to be no significant differentiation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The real difference existed in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made for an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the stool continued until much later periods of time. But the stool also then was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be noted, 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 were constructed in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are worked out of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, can be seen some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient item still in form but as in a trove of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are visible. These creative legs were considered to have been created from bent wood and were in that case bore huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek style; a number of casts of seated Romans offer evidence of a denser and which appear to be a rather crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light or the heavy, were popularised within the Classicist time. The klismos style can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of marked iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as well as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and artworks has been kept safe, with images of the interior and exterior of Chinese homes and the furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing likeness to designs of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was found both with and without arms but never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one design, however, the stiles were delicately curved by the arms to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Together, the three sections are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a limited extent stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) represent a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved for senior people in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, held 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 the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of fairly thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal 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
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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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