Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair might be paramount. While the majority of other forms (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces including the bench and sofa, which might be regarded 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 an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it historically was a symbol of social placement. Within the old royal courts there were significant signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior dignity, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher level.
In its furniture creation, the chair is employed for a range of various forms. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has been perfected to suit to growing human uses. From its unique relationship with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when being used. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and judged by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the different parts of a chair were named like the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear function of your chair is to support our human body, its value is valued generally on how suitably it fulfills this practical use. In the manufacture of a chair, the carpenter is limited within the static law and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that held unique chair shapes, as expressions of the principal work in the areas of handling and design. In those societies, individual note 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of careful scheme, are today known from tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs designed as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular design was created. There was to all appearances no significant difference between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The general change lies in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured for an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool the form stayed around until much later points. But the stool also then was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were worked with wood. The plain make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came again at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of those is the folding stool, of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient object still extant but as seen from a trove of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them could be visible. These creative legs were most likely to be created from bent wood and were probably put under a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very stable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; existing statues of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and are a somewhat crudely built klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were popularised within the Classicist era. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special brands of notable originality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of drawings and paintings had been protected, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing likeness to representations of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair is designed both with and without arms though always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles had been slightly curved over the arms so as to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Each of the three areas had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the Chinese back splat later had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a limited capability embolden corner joints (and then are loose as a result) are a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for older individuals, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been constructed by either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same time, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer examples might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised 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
Within 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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