From each of the furniture forms, the chair could be of the most importance. While many other objects (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further kinds for example the bench or sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it was historically a symbol of social rank. In the Medieval royal courts there were significant connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to cope with a stool. From the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior standing, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As its furniture purpose, the chair encompasses a variety of variations. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make 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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have adapted to suit to changing human requirements. From its close importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when utilised. Although 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 best seen and fairly regarded by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the individual areas of a chair have been named likened to the elements of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental role of the chair is to support a human body, its credit is judged generally from how well it fulfills this practical job. Within the construction of the chair, the designer is restricted within the static regulation and principal measurements. In these boundaries, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair is an epoch of several thousand years. There existed peoples that have created iconic chair shapes, expressions of the highest object in the spheres of craft and art. Out of these civilisations, particular mention must 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 construct of skilled make, are a finding from tomb findings. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular form was created. There was to our understanding no noteworthy differentiation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The simple variation existed in the type of ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was created as an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool the stool persevered til much later periods of time. But the stool then played the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be observed, 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 structure of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were made from wood. The simple make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen again but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient item still extant but as seen from a wealth of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are shown. These curving legs were considered to have been executed of bent wood and were probably bore huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were clearly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; evidence of casts of seated Romans show evidence of a more heavyset and apparently rather more crudely constructed klismos. Both kinds, the light and heavy, were popularised within the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of marked uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be followed as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of images and paintings has been kept, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing similarity to representations of past chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair can be designed both with or without arms although always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles had been marginally curved above the arms in order to fit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). The three areas had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of a back splat had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a particular extent support corner joints (and were loose in the bargain) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs probably were reserved for older persons in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Works of art project a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be found in engravings of interiors of wealthy 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 can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with its harmonious 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 of styles—that was, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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