From each of the furniture items, the chair may be of the most importance. While most of the other forms (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is used here in the common sense, from stool to throne to developed pieces including the bench or sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it was also symbolic of social place. At the Medieval royal courts there were clear distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. In the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior position, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
As a furniture construction, the chair is employed for a range of variations. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have been evolved to suit to growing human requirements. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in use. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly judged with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the various parts of the chair are given names likened to the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original purpose of a chair is to support your body, its worth is tested basically from how suitably it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the creation of a chair, the designer is limited for the static legislation and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There were societies that have created distinctive chair shapes, as expressions of the foremost object in the spheres of technique and design. Among these such peoples, a mention can 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 upshot of expert scheme, are today found from tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular construction was crafted. There was apparently no marked change in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The main difference exists in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created for an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this type continued til much later days. But the stool also was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were made of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappeared somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient specimen still in form but seen in a wealth of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are shown. These curving legs were probably executed of bent wood and were thus bore a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very durable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek style; existing casts of seated Romans offer chairs of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of crudely designed klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were revived in the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable individuality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of sketches and paintings was kept, showing the insides and outer parts of Chinese households and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing resemblance to designs of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair is constructed both with or without arms but always having a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, however, the stiles had been delicately curved over the arms for the purpose of conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). The three sections are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat exercised an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a restricted ability reinforce corner joints (and then were loose into the bargain) signify a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were only for the senior members of the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been held together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks project a design 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 the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same period, held 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 the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, 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 crafted in large quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and expensive 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 styles—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of relatively thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more upmarket examples would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 commonly 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 products 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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