From all the furniture objects, the chair could be the most important. While most of the other items (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is said here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to developed types including the bench or sofa, which may be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic piece; it is also a signifier of social placement. In the historical royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. In the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior standing, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In its furniture creation, the chair is used for a variety of different models. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have been perfected to match to differing human desires. From its significant link with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when being used. While it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and clearly evaluated by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several areas of a chair have been given names corresponding to the areas of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary purpose of your chair is to support a body, its credit is judged basically by how fully it does measure up to this practical job. Within the manufacture of the chair, the designer is bound in the static rules and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There were cultures that have created iconic chair types, as expressive of the premier endeavour in the industries of skill and art. Out of these cultures, individual note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of masterful make, are today known from findings made in tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs formed similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular construction was crafted. There was to our knowledge no notable differentiation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The only variation was in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted for an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this form existed for much later times. But the stool also was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be found, 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 were in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are worked with wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappears some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient specimen still extant but seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area 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 those could be visible. These unusual legs were presumed to have been manufactured from bent wood and were as such had extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super durable and were plainly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; a number of models of seated Romans show evidence of a heavier and in appearance rather crudely built klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos influence is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of considerable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as well as in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of drawings and paintings had been protected, with images of the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing familiarity to designs of older chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was found both with and without arms but never missing its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles were delicately curved on top of the arms for the purpose of suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Together, the three areas had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (and then are loose additionally) signify a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for older persons, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the innovation actually was born 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 patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and fine 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 forms—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres 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 tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer items would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour in many 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
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 products 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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