From all the furniture items, the chair could be the paramount one. While many other forms (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be used here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces like a bench and sofa, which can 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 interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic object; it is historically an indicator of social standing. Within the past royal courts there were important signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior dignity, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is used for a variety of various purposes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms has been evolved to match to evolving human desires. Because of its close relationship with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when in use. Although it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is best seen and evaluated by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter need the other. Thus the various areas of the chair were named likened to the areas of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic work of a chair is to support your body, its value is judged basically by how well it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the structure of the chair, the chair maker is bound by particular static legislation and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that held unique chair shapes, expressions of the foremost craft in the spheres of technique and creativity. Out of such civilisations, 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful craft, are found from tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular construction was made. There seemed to be no notable variation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The real difference was in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was made for an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool that kind persisted til much later times. But the stool also was created as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are made from wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared again but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still existing but as seen from a wealth of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be visible. These unique legs were thought to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were in that case put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely stable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; existing statues of seated Romans show designs of a thicker and apparently slightly more crudely built klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos chair is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular brands of marked originality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be followed as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of sketches and paintings has been preserved, detailing the interior and exteriors of Chinese homes and their furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing familiarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been found both with or without arms however always with the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles are marginally curved above the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Each of the three sections had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only to a restricted capability support corner joints (and were loose in the result) indicate a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were only for the senior members of the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been affixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be seen in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive 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—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of fairly thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive items would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference 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 well-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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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