Out of each of the furniture forms, the chair could be the paramount one. While the majority of other items (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further types including the bench and sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic craft; it is historically a symbol of social rank. At the old royal courts there were social connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. From the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior position, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture creation, the chair holds a wealth of different models. 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). During the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has changed to fit to growing human desires. Due to its significant importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when in employ. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and regarded best with a person using it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual limbs of a chair have been given names like the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary job of your chair is to support our body, its value is judged primarily from how fully it fulfills this practical role. In the creation of a chair, the carpenter is restricted by particular static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There were cultures that have created unique chair types, as expressions of the leading work in the spheres of craft and aesthetics. Out of those civilisations, particular 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of masterful make, are now a finding from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs crafted similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was created. There seems to be no particular difference between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The simple variation lied in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created for an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool that kind continued til much later times. But the stool then also was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are created out of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, is seen again somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of those is the folding stool, from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient item still in form but as seen from a wealth of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be seen. These odd legs were considered to be crafted out of bent wood and were probably subjected to huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely solid and were visibly signified.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; evidence of statues of seated Romans display evidence of a heavier and in appearance rather more crudely designed klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special kinds of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of images and artworks was preserved, showing the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting likeness to images of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair was designed both with and without arms although never without its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles were slightly curved by the arms so as to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). All three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the back splat then had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that merely to a limited ability support corner joints (and then were loose to top that off) represent an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were allowed only for senior individuals in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decorative parts are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not look to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same era, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and expensive 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 forms—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of fairly thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive chairs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and won favour 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 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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