Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair could be the most important. While many other pieces (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair can be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to further pieces such as a bench and sofa, which might be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic piece of art; it can also be a signifier of social standing. In the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture form, the chair holds a variety of various forms. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds have perfected to fit to evolving human requirements. Because of its significant importance with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when being utilised. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly judged by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the individual areas of a chair were named corresponding to the elements of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental function of a chair is to support the body, its value is evaluated primarily by how fully it does measure up to this practical function. Within the design of a chair, the builder is bound in the static legislation and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that held individual chair shapes, as expressions of the principal work in the spheres of technique and aesthetics. From 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful design, were a finding from tomb discoveries. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular construction was created. There seems to be no particular change between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The simple variation existed in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted as an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the chair existed during much later periods of time. But the stool then also was designed as the character of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are made with wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came up somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known 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 typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient specimen still extant but from a trove of pictorial objects. The better recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are visible. These strange legs were most likely to be crafted of bent wood and were in that case had huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very durable and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek design; quite a few casts of seated Romans are designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a slightly more crudely constructed klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist time. The klismos design is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special forms of notable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of sketches and artworks has been kept safe, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing similarity to styles of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, two chair designs dominated in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was seen both with and without arms although never without its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, though, the stiles could be delicately curved on top of the arms so as to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Together, the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of a back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a particular limit embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) represent a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs presumably were allowed only for the senior members of the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Works of art 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 in between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be 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. Though this kind of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes such 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. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive designs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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