From each of the furniture objects, the chair could be the paramount one. While most of the other forms (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further forms including a bench or sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic object; it historically is an indicator of social placement. Within the past royal courts there were clear differences between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. From the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen a signifier of superior dignity, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture form, the chair can be employed for a wealth of various forms. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing 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, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes have evolved to fit to evolving human needs. For its particular association with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when in use. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly evaluated by a person using it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several parts of a chair were named like the limbs of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary function of a chair is to support our human body, its value is judged generally for how well it does measure up to this practical job. In the build of a chair, the maker is bound with some static laws and principal measurements. Under these limitations, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There are cultures that had unique chair shapes, expressions of the highest craft in the arenas of technique and aesthetics. From these peoples, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful craft, were known from 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 had four legs formed similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular construction was crafted. There was from our view no significant difference from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The simple variation lied in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed to be an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the form persevered til much later points in time. But the stool also was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are worked out of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen again at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still in form but as found in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs were visible. These strange legs were understood to have been crafted with bent wood and were as such put under a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super durable and were plainly signified.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; a number of models of seated Romans are designs of a denser and apparently kind of less delicately designed klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular forms of notable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of sketches and works of art was protected, detailing the interior and exteriors of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing familiarity to styles of past chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair was seen both with or without arms though always having the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms in order to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). All three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of this back splat later had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a limited ability reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose as well) represent a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs probably were allowed only for senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both furniture items is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up 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 were mortised on one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside of wealthy 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 may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 reknowned 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 brands 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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