Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be the primary one. While most other forms (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to further items including a bench or sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic object; it historically is a signifier of social status. In the Medieval royal courts there were significant differences between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. During the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior status, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher floor.
In a furniture form, the chair encompasses a number of various purposes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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. We can make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types have been adapted to conform to differing human uses. Due to its unique connection with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when in use. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the several areas of a chair are given labels corresponding to the parts of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental role of a chair is to support your body, its credit is evaluated principally for how suitably it measures up to this practical job. In the design of a chair, the builder is limited for certain static laws and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair designer has great freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that have created distinctive chair types, expressive of the premier object in the areas of skill and aesthetics. Within such peoples, individual mention 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled scheme, are found from findings made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular construction was created. There was in our view no significant variation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The main variation was in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted as an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool the form persevered until much later points. But the stool also then was designed as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are created with wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came again but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient fossil still around but in a large amount of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those can be visible. These odd legs were understood to be manufactured from bent wood and were thus had huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super durable and were overtly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; a number of models of seated Romans show evidence of a denser and apparently rather crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were popularised during the Classicist time. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special forms of considerable originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be followed as far as that of Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and artworks was protected, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese households and the furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting likeness to styles of older chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be designed both with or without arms however always having a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms so as to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Each of the three parts were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the style of the Chinese back splat later had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a particular ability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were only for elderly persons, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been constructed with either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were 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 can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and delicate 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 was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of quite thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised 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 reknowned 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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