Out of all furniture objects, the chair could be the most imperative. While many other objects (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds including 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 clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic piece; it is also symbolic of social placement. From the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to cope with a stool. From the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior rank, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a variety of various models. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds has been evolved to conform to changing human requirements. For its particular association with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when being utilised. Although it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly tested by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the individual elements of the chair were labeled likened to the limbs of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear work of the chair is to support the human body, its worth is judged principally on how suitably it does measure up to this practical purpose. Within the build of a chair, the chair maker is bound within certain static regulation and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There are societies that had significant chair forms, as seen of the leading work in the industries of skill and aesthetics. Out of these such civilisations, individual 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 result of masterful scheme, are now seen from discoveries made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular construction was crafted. There was in our view no noteworthy variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The general change exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was developed to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the chair existed during much later periods of time. But the stool also was created as the use of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, also appeared somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of those is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient object still extant but seen in a variety of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs could be visible. These strange legs were possibly manufactured out of bent wood and were thus subjected to a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very solid and were clearly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; some casts of seated Romans offer examples of a more heavyset and are a somewhat more crudely designed klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist time. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special types of marked uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be traced as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and paintings has been kept, displaying the interior and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing familiarity to images of past chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been constructed both with and without arms however always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles are marginally curved by the arms in order to fit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Together, all three parts were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the style of this back splat had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a particular extent reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose to top it off) signify a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of 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 households of this era armchairs likely were only for elderly people in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It does not vary 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 use of a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects 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 parts do not appear to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings project a type 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 bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, possessed 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 interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with 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 style—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes the 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. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of rather thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more expensive items would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 popularised 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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