Out of all furniture needs, the chair could be primary. While the majority of other pieces (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair was looked upon here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds such as a bench and sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic object; it was also a symbol of social rank. From the past royal courts there were clear connotations between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to utilise a stool. During the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a number of various models. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds has been perfected to match to growing human needs. Due to its close connection with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when utilised. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various parts of a chair are named likened to the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original purpose of a chair is to support your body, its credit is valued principally by how completely it fulfills this practical job. In the design of the chair, the designer is bound within particular static regulation and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that made distinctive chair types, seen of the premier object in the areas of handling and aesthetics. In these civilisations, special 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of careful design, are now seen from tomb findings. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs formed not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular design was obtained. There was apparently no significant variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The real difference was in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool the type stayed around for much later days. But the stool then also was created as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were made of wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, can be seen somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient fossil still in form but as in a wealth of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs are displayed. These unusual legs were thought to have been crafted from bent wood and were in that case put under extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very durable and were clearly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; existing models of seated Romans offer designs of a denser and are a kind of more crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos chair is found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular types of marked originality around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and paintings has been kept, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese houses and the furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting likeness to images of ancient chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be designed both with and without arms although never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, however, the stiles could be delicately curved on top of the arms to conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Each of the three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a limited extent reinforce corner joints (and were loose in the result) are a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs probably were kept for older individuals, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been put together by either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same era, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant 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 style—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the preference 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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