From all the furniture objects, the chair may be of most importance. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is viewed here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces including a bench and sofa, which should be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic craft; it can also be semiotic of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were important connotations between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior dignity, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher level.
In a furniture creation, the chair can be employed for a number of variations. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types has perfected to suit to evolving human requirements. Because of its significant link with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when utilised. Though it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged best with a person using it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the individual elements of the chair have been given labels corresponding to the elements of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original job of your chair is to support a human body, its value is valued primarily by how suitably it measures up to this practical role. In the creation of a chair, the carpenter is restricted within the static regulation and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that had individual chair forms, as seen of the principal endeavour in the spheres of handling and art. In those cultures, a 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 masterful design, were found from discoveries made in tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular structure was made. There was apparently no notable differentiation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The main variation lies in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured as an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that type existed for much later points. But the stool then also played the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are worked with wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came again at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient object still extant but as in a large amount of pictorial material. The iconic kind is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs can be displayed. These strange legs were presumed to have been crafted in bent wood and were likely to have been had a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very strong and were visibly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; designs of statues of seated Romans are chairs of a more heavyset and apparently somewhat more crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some brands of considerable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be followed as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and artworks was kept, displaying the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing familiarity to pictures of older chairs.
As in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be designed both with or without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles were lightly curved above the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a restricted extent reinforce corner joints (and then are loose as well) represent an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs probably were kept only for older people in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings show a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more expensive chairs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 reknowned 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 products 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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