Of all furniture items, the chair may be the imperative one. While most other objects (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces for example the bench and sofa, which might be viewed 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 interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic object; it can also be a symbol of social placement. In the old royal courts there were social differences between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. During the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed an identifier of superior status, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair holds a variety of different makes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types has been evolved to fit to changing human uses. From its close connection with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when used. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and evaluated by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the different parts of a chair have been labeled according to the parts of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental work of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is judged primarily on how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the construction of a chair, the carpenter is restricted within the static rules and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There existed peoples that had unique chair shapes, expressive of the leading craft in the areas of technique and design. Out of these cultures, special mention must 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 construct of skilled craft, are a finding from discoveries made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs formed as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular construction was made. There was in our understanding no noteworthy differentiation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The simple change lied in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made for an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool the form stayed til much later periods. But the stool also played the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappears somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient item still around but from a wealth of pictorial items. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which are visible. These strange legs were presumed to have been manufactured from bent wood and were therefore needed to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely stable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek style; existing statues of seated Romans are chairs of a thicker and in appearance slightly less intricately constructed klismos. Both features, the light or the heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos design is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some types of marked originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be charted as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of sketches and paintings had been kept safe, showing the interior and exteriors of Chinese houses and their furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting similarity to designs of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair was designed both with and without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it has been seen, the stiles were lightly curved by the arms to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of a back splat then had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a limited capability embolden corner joints (and are loose as well) are an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were only for older members of the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements 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 members do not seem to have been affixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of 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 of forms—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of rather thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and finer chairs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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