Out of all furniture needs, the chair may be of most importance. While many other pieces (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be looked upon here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed types including the bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.
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/or an aesthetic craft; it was also a symbol of social rank. From the past royal courts there were significant differences between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. In the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a number of different forms. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms have changed to suit to growing human requirements. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when in use. Although it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and evaluated by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the different parts of the chair are given names according to the elements of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original work of the chair is to support the body, its value is judged firstly for how completely it does measure up to this practical purpose. Within the design of the chair, the builder is restricted in the static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There existed societies that have created significant chair shapes, expressions of the principal craft in the industries of craft and art. Out of such peoples, a 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 objects of masterful craft, are now known from tomb findings. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs formed like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular form was made. There was apparently no particular change in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The main difference existed in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was crafted to be an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that form persevered during much later points in time. But the stool then also played the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already 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 made in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were made from wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came up somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient fossil still existing but as found in a wealth of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which would be shown. These curved legs were most likely to be manufactured with bent wood and were probably had extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super stable and were particularly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; quite a few casts of seated Romans are chairs of a thicker and in appearance somewhat less delicately built klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were revived in the Classicist period. The klismos style is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular forms of marked originality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as long as in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and works of art had been kept safe, displaying the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to designs of older chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was constructed both with or without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles had been slightly curved above the arms so as to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). Together, all three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a limited limit embolden corner joints (and were loose as well) indicate a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were reserved only for the senior people, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Artworks show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely 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 of forms—that was, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise 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 use wood of rather thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and won favour 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 popular 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 versions 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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