From all the furniture items, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other objects (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the general sense, from stool to throne to complex types like a bench or sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic object; it was historically semiotic of social status. At the Medieval royal courts there were social signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. From the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen a signifier of superior dignity, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In a furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a number of various makes. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has adapted to fit to differing human uses. Due to its significant relationship with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when being utilised. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly evaluated with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the various elements of a chair have been given names like the names of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of your chair is to support the human body, its value is judged generally for how suitably it does fulfill this practical use. In the structure of the chair, the chair maker is bound for some static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that had unique chair types, as seen of the foremost object in the spheres of technique and creativity. Within these civilisations, a 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 craft, are today found from findings made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed like those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular form was obtained. There was to our knowledge no marked differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The real change exists in the complexity of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed as an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool that type stayed around for much later days. But the stool also then was created as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can today be observed, 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 were constructed in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were created with wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was seen again some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient fossil still around but as seen in a wealth of pictorial material. The archetype is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are shown. These strange legs were thought to have been created in bent wood and were probably put under huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very durable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; designs of casts of seated Romans are examples of a thicker and are a somewhat less delicately built klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were brought back within the Classicist period. The klismos design is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of profound iconicism within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and artworks had been protected, showing the insides and exterior of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is found both with or without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, however, the stiles could be marginally curved by the arms so as to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Together, all three parts are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the style of this back splat later had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a particular extent support corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) indicate a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were kept for senior individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed 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 change in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Paintings project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the 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 style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 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 versions 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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