From all the furniture pieces, the chair might be of most importance. While most of the other objects (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to further kinds including the bench or sofa, which might 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 a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it historically is a symbol of social ranking. Within the Medieval royal courts there were clear differences between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. During the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior standing, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In a furniture construction, the chair is used for a range of various makes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design 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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes has been perfected to suit to evolving human needs. For its unique link with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when in use. Although it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and clearly evaluated by a person using it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several elements of a chair were labeled likened to the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of your chair is to support the human body, its credit is valued principally on how fully it does fulfill this practical use. Within the manufacture of the chair, the designer is limited in the static rules and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extends over a period of several thousand years. There are societies that held unique chair shapes, as expressive of the topmost task in the areas of skill and creativity. From these civilisations, individual 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 objects of skilled craft, are a finding from tomb findings. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs designed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was created. There was in our understanding no particular variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only change lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this chair continued until much later points in time. But the stool also was made as the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, 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 made in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were made from wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was seen again some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient object still around but as found in a wealth of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs can be visible. These creative legs were thought to have been created with bent wood and were therefore subjected to a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very solid and were particularly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; quite a few models of seated Romans are chairs of a denser and in appearance somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist period. The klismos chair is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular types of considerable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be traced as well as that of Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of drawings and paintings has been protected, displaying the interiors and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting likeness to images of past chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is constructed both with and without arms although always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, however, the stiles are lightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). Together, all three limbs had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a particular extent reinforce corner joints (and then were loose in the bargain) are an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were kept for the senior people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative elements are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been adjoined with either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks show a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be found in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 styles—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits 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 made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of rather thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread 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 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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