Of all furniture needs, the chair might be paramount. While most of the other forms (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces such as the bench and sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic object; it is historically an indicator of social place. At the past royal courts there were clear signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to use a stool. In the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been iconic of superior status, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture form, the chair encompasses a range of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types have changed to suit to different human uses. For its close connection with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when being utilised. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the different limbs of the chair have been given labels as the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary role of your chair is to support a body, its value is valued generally for how suitably it fulfills this practical role. Within the manufacture of the chair, the maker is bound by some static regulation and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that created significant chair forms, expressions of the leading craft in the arenas of handling and design. Among those cultures, special mention can 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled make, are now known from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs designed similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular structure was obtained. There appears to be no marked difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The only variation was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed to be an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool the stool existed for much later times. But the stool also then was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are made from wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came again at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient object still extant but as in a trove of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them could be seen. These unique legs were considered to be executed of bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very strong and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans offer chairs of a heavier and are a slightly less delicately built klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special kinds of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be charted as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of images and works of art has been kept safe, showing the inside and exteriors of Chinese homes and their furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting likeness to pictures of older chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair is found both with and without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, however, the stiles had been slightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). The three sections are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of this back splat had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a particular capability reinforce corner joints (and then are loose as well) indicate a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs probably were only for older members of the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks project a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be displayed 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. While this style of chair is also made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 style—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 well-known 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 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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