Out of all furniture items, the chair might be of the most importance. While the majority of other objects (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs for example the bench and sofa, which should be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic object; it was also semiotic of social place. Within the old royal courts there were plain signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. From the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior dignity, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In a furniture purpose, the chair can be employed for a range of various purposes. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, 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.
Our lifestyle has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes has been adapted to match to different human desires. For its unique connection with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when used. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged by a person using it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the several areas of the chair were given labels as the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original role of your chair is to support the body, its credit is valued firstly from how suitably it does measure up to this practical job. In the build of a chair, the chair maker is limited by certain static legislation and principal measurements. Inside these boundaries, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was dates of several thousand years. There existed cultures that have created distinctive chair forms, as expressions of the premier endeavour in the arenas of technique and design. In such societies, 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 upshot of masterful craft, are now found from tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was crafted. There was to our knowledge no marked differentiation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The main difference lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was developed to be an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the kind stayed around til much later periods. But the stool also then was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were worked out of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then appeared but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient fossil still existing but as in a wealth of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos placed 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, only two of those legs could be seen. These strange legs were thought to be created from bent wood and were as such needed to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very strong and were clearly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; existing statues of seated Romans offer designs of a denser and which appear to be a rather more crudely designed klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were popularised during the Classicist period. The klismos design is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of notable originality around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of images and artworks was protected, detailing the interior and exteriors of Chinese households and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing similarity to designs of previous chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair was constructed both with or without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles had been delicately curved on top of the arms so as to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). The three parts had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the Chinese back splat then had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a restricted limit support corner joints (as well as being loose as well) represent a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs most likely were kept only for the senior family members, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been constructed with either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine 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 progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved 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 thereof are constructed from wood of relatively thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive items can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the favourite in large 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 popularised 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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