Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be of most importance. While most of the other forms (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to complex types like the bench and sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic piece; it is historically an indicator of social ranking. In the old royal courts there were plain distinctions between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior rank, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture form, the chair encompasses a variety of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms has been perfected to suit to growing human needs. For its significant relationship with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being used. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly regarded by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the several areas of the chair are given names likened to the elements of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental function of the chair is to support the body, its credit is valued basically on how completely it fulfills this practical function. Within the construction of the chair, the builder is limited by particular static laws and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There were civilizations that held iconic chair types, expressive of the premier craft in the industries of skill and creativity. Within these societies, individual 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 items of masterful make, are seen from tomb findings. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs designed as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular design was created. There appeared to be no notable difference from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The main difference lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was manufactured for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool the stool continued for much later days. But the stool then was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were made of wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient item still extant but as seen from a large amount of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs would be displayed. These curving legs were presumed to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were probably had extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely solid and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; a number of models of seated Romans show examples of a denser and apparently somewhat more crudely built klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist era. The klismos design is seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of notable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as well as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and paintings had been kept safe, showing the inside and exterior of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting resemblance to images of past chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is found both with or without arms although never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, however, the stiles are lightly curved above the arms so as to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). The three sections are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a particular extent stabilise corner joints (and then are loose in the result) represent a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for senior members of the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not look to have been constructed with either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into position 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 type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with 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 form—that was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and finer chairs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference 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 well-known 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 styles 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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