Of all furniture pieces, the chair could be the imperative one. While most of the other pieces (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was looked upon here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to complex items including the bench and sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic piece; it historically is semiotic of social place. Within the past royal courts there were social distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to utilise a stool. Since the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior standing, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised platform.
In its furniture construction, the chair is used for a range of various forms. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs 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.
Modern day living has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes has been adapted to fit to changing human needs. Because of its close association with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when in employ. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged best with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the individual limbs of a chair were given labels according to the elements of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first work of your chair is to support a body, its value is valued primarily from how completely it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the build of the chair, the chair maker is limited by particular static law and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair designer has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that held unique chair types, seen of the principal endeavour in the arenas of technique and aesthetics. Out of these cultures, a note 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 skilled design, are today known from tomb discoveries. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs shaped as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular form was crafted. There was to our understanding no notable change from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The main variation exists in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was made as an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool that form stayed til much later periods. But the stool then also was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were worked out of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, was then seen some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient object still around but in a wealth of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them would be seen. These unusual legs were understood to be crafted of bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very durable and were visibly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; existing casts of seated Romans offer examples of a denser and apparently somewhat crudely constructed klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of notable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of sketches and paintings was protected, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing familiarity to images of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two chair designs dominated in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been designed both with or without arms but always having its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles could be lightly curved on top of the arms in order to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Together, all three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the Chinese back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a limited capability embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose as well) represent a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs probably were reserved only for older persons in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not seem to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Artworks display a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, 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 unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant 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 form—that was, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of fairly thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket chairs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 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 styles 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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