Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be the most imperative. While the majority of other items (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be used here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including a bench and 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 clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic piece of art; it historically is an indicator of social rank. At the past royal courts there were plain differences between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to squat on a stool. Since the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior dignity, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture creation, the chair encompasses a wealth of different models. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms has evolved to suit to changing human requirements. From its particular importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being used. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged best with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the different areas of a chair have been given names corresponding to the limbs of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of the chair is to support a body, its credit is tested firstly from how well it measures up to this practical role. In the build of the chair, the builder is restricted by particular static regulations and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that made distinctive chair forms, expressive of the leading object in the spheres of technique and aesthetics. Out of these societies, particular note needs to 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled make, are today seen from tomb discoveries. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs crafted akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular form was created. There was in our understanding no particular change between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The general variation lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured as an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool the stool continued until much later points in time. But the stool then played the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed out of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then appeared but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still around but as seen in a trove of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs are seen. These strange legs were presumed to be crafted with bent wood and were likely to have been had a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely solid and were overtly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; a number of models of seated Romans offer designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos design can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some kinds of notable individuality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be followed as well as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of images and artworks had been preserved, detailing the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and their furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing resemblance to styles of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been constructed both with and without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, though, the stiles were delicately curved above the arms so as to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). Together, the three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of a back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a limited capability support corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) are an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were kept for elderly family members, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been put together by either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks show a style 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 little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same time, granted 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 the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms 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 small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of quite thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and finer items might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and won favour 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
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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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