Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair could be the paramount one. While the majority of other pieces (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be said here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to further makes for example the bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic object; it is historically symbolic of social placement. From the historical royal courts there were social differences between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior standing, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As its furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a range of different purposes. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times 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, and/or 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 day living has demanded unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms have been evolved to suit to differing human needs. Due to its close link with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when used. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is best seen and clearly evaluated by a person using it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several limbs of the chair were given labels according to the limbs of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary purpose of a chair is to support a body, its worth is valued generally for how suitably it measures up to this practical job. In the build of a chair, the chair maker is bound within the static legislation and principal measurements. Within these rules, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted dates of several thousand years. There were peoples that have created individual chair types, as expressive of the topmost task in the spheres of technique and aesthetics. Within those civilisations, special 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of expert craft, are today a finding from tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs formed not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular design was created. There was from our understanding no notable difference in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The simple difference was in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the type stayed til much later periods. But the stool then was designed for the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be observed, 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 are in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were worked of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient specimen still extant but as in a large amount of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are shown. These creative legs were thought to be crafted from bent wood and were as such bore great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were particularly signified.
The Romans embued the Greek design; some models of seated Romans are designs of a heavier and which appear to be a slightly crudely crafted klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were brought back within the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some forms of considerable originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and artworks was kept, displaying the interiors and exteriors of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing familiarity to styles of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been constructed both with or without arms but always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles are lightly curved above the arms so as to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). Together, the three sections are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the back splat later had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a restricted limit reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose additionally) signify a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs most likely were only for the senior family members, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art display a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors 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 can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The style 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 forms—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat suits 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer chairs can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour in several 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
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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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