From all the furniture items, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other pieces (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair can be said here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to further kinds like a bench or sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic object; it is historically an indicator of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were important signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to sit on a stool. From the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior dignity, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a variety of various makes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes have been evolved to fit to growing human needs. Because of its significant link with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when utilised. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is best seen and evaluated by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the various elements of a chair are given names like the areas of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear purpose of a chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated generally on how completely it does fulfill this practical use. Within the manufacture of a chair, the maker is bound by some static legislation and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had individual chair shapes, expressions of the premier object in the spheres of skill and creativity. Among such societies, particular note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled craft, are now found from tomb discoveries. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs formed as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular construction was crafted. There was to our knowledge no notable differentiation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The simple change lied in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted for an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool that form persisted for much later periods of time. But the stool then was made as the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are formed from wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came up some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient item still extant but as seen in a variety of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which would be shown. These creative legs were understood to be manufactured out of bent wood and were in that case had to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were visibly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; a number of statues of seated Romans offer evidence of a more heavyset and in appearance somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both features, the light or the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos style is found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular types of considerable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be followed as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and artworks had been protected, showing the interior and outside of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing similarity to representations of ancient chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair is found both with and without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms so as to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). All three sections were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat later had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a particular limit embolden corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the bargain) signify an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were kept for older individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been constructed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by 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 form—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of rather thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found 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 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 products 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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