From all the furniture forms, the chair may be the paramount one. While the majority of other pieces (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to developed types for example a bench or sofa, which might 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 stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic piece of art; it historically was a symbol of social hierarchy. Within the Medieval royal courts there were social differences between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. During the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior status, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As its furniture construction, the chair ranges from a wealth of variations. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types have evolved to match to growing human needs. From its unique link with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when in use. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the various elements of a chair are given names like the parts of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first work of the chair is to support our human body, its credit is judged basically on how fully it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the design of the chair, the builder is restricted for particular static law and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There were societies that held iconic chair forms, as seen of the leading object in the arenas of skill and creativity. Among such civilisations, particular 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled make, are today found from tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular structure was obtained. There was from our knowledge no marked difference from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The real difference lies in the complex ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured as an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this type stayed around during much later periods. But the stool also then was designed as the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were made from wood. The simple build of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came again but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still in form but as seen from a wealth of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs were shown. These unusual legs were understood to be executed in bent wood and were thus subjected to extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super stable and were particularly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; quite a few casts of seated Romans display examples of a denser and apparently rather crudely built klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were revived during the Classicist period. The klismos design can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special types of notable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be followed as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and artworks had been kept, with images of the interior and exteriors of Chinese houses and their furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to images of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been found both with or without arms but never missing a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles are slightly curved above the arms for the purpose of conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). Each of the three limbs had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat later had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only to a limited ability support corner joints (and furthermore are loose into the bargain) represent a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were reserved only for senior individuals, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into 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 had its mark on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with 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 style—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of quite thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer designs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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