Of all furniture needs, the chair might be the primary one. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be said here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to further forms such as the bench or sofa, which can be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic item; it was also symbolic of social ranking. Within the Medieval royal courts there were important differences between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to use a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior status, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In a furniture purpose, the chair is used for a range of different models. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have adapted to suit to changing human desires. Because of its unique relationship with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when being utilised. While it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and judged best by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different parts of a chair are given labels corresponding to the areas of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic work of your chair is to support our body, its credit is valued generally on how fully it does fulfill this practical job. In the manufacture of the chair, the chair maker is bound with particular static law and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that have created significant chair types, as expressive of the foremost work in the spheres of handling and art. Within those peoples, 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of masterful scheme, were seen from findings made in tombs. First 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 designed similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular construction was crafted. There was in our knowledge no significant change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The main variation exists in the type of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this kind existed for much later periods of time. But the stool also existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are worked with wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappears at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient fossil still around but seen in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them would be displayed. These curved legs were presumably executed with bent wood and were thus needed to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely solid and were overtly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; some statues of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a rather crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos design can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular forms of marked uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be traced as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and artworks has been kept, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting likeness to pictures of past chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was seen both with or without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles could be delicately curved above the arms to conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Together, all three sections had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of this back splat then had an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a particular ability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) signify an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs most likely were kept only for the senior individuals, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been put together by either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, held the status 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 interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself with its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of fairly thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the preference 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 well-known 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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