From each of the furniture forms, the chair may be primary. While most of the other pieces (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was looked upon here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed chairs such as the bench and sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic artwork; it was historically symbolic of social standing. From the historical royal courts there were clear signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. In the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior position, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
As its furniture form, the chair can be used for a wealth of various forms. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has been perfected to fit to growing human uses. Because of its significant relationship with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when used. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly judged with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the several areas of the chair have been named according to the elements of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original job of the chair is to support your body, its credit is evaluated principally from how well it does fulfill this practical job. In the construction of a chair, the chair maker is limited with the static regulations and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that made unique chair types, expressions of the highest work in the areas of craft and design. Out of such societies, particular 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of expert craft, are now a finding from tomb discoveries. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs structured like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular structure was crafted. There appeared to be no significant variation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The simple variation lies in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this stool continued until much later points. But the stool also took on the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were worked out of wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, can be seen at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient object still existing but as seen from a large amount of pictorial items. The better recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs can be shown. These strange legs were understood to have been crafted with bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super durable and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; quite a few casts of seated Romans offer chairs of a more heavyset and apparently rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist period. The klismos style is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular types of considerable iconicism around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and works of art had been protected, showing the inside and exterior of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing resemblance to designs of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been found both with or without arms but always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved above the arms to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). Together, the three limbs had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that merely to a limited extent support corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the result) indicate a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were only for the senior individuals, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decorative parts are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in place in the manner 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 kind 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 bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair is also made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were 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 manufactured in large numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference in many 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
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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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