Of all furniture objects, the chair might be the most imperative. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the general sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds like a bench or 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 clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic piece; it is historically symbolic of social standing. In the old royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to make do with a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior dignity, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As a furniture form, the chair is employed for a range of various purposes. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes have changed to suit to changing human desires. For its significant relationship with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when utilised. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and judged with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the individual areas of a chair are given labels according to the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first role of your chair is to support a body, its value is judged primarily from how suitably it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the creation of the chair, the chair maker is limited for the static law and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There existed societies that have created unique chair shapes, expressive of the highest task in the industries of technique and art. Within these civilisations, individual note 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 expert craft, were known from tomb findings. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs crafted as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular design was obtained. There was in our knowledge no marked difference from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The simple difference lies in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created as an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that chair stayed for much later periods. But the stool then also was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today 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 constructed in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, is seen but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient fossil still around but as seen from a variety of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those could be displayed. These curved legs were thought to be created with bent wood and were therefore had to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely durable and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; quite a few statues of seated Romans display examples of a thicker and are a slightly crudely crafted klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were popularised in the Classicist era. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular types of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be followed as far as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of images and works of art was kept, with images of the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing likeness to pictures of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is constructed both with or without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles were marginally curved on top of the arms so as to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). Each of the three limbs had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of this back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a particular limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose into the bargain) are a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were kept only for the senior people, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Artworks show a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be found 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. Though this kind of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and delicate 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 is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and finer examples would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier 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 commonly 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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