From all the furniture pieces, the chair may be paramount. While most of the other objects (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex types such as the bench and sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic item; it can also be symbolic of social status. At the old royal courts there were plain distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. During the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior standing, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture construction, the chair can be used for a range of different makes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times 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 have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds has evolved to fit to evolving human requirements. Because of its particular importance with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when in use. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and tested with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several limbs of a chair were given labels like the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first job of the chair is to support your body, its worth is valued principally for how suitably it fulfills this practical function. Within the creation of the chair, the carpenter is bound for certain static rules and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that created unique chair shapes, expressive of the foremost endeavour in the spheres of technique and creativity. From these such societies, a note needs to 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 scheme, are now seen from discoveries made in tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs structured akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was obtained. There was apparently no noteworthy change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The real variation lied in the kind of ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the type stayed around for much later times. But the stool also then was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool ignored 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 decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were worked with wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappears at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of those is the folding stool, of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient item still around but found in a trove of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them would be displayed. These strange legs were considered to have been manufactured with bent wood and were as such needed to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely stable and were plainly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; a number of casts of seated Romans show chairs of a thicker and which appear to be a slightly crudely built klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were popularised within the Classicist time. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special brands of marked individuality around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and artworks was preserved, with images of the insides and exterior of Chinese houses and the furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing likeness to representations of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been seen both with or without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, though, the stiles had been slightly curved above the arms to fit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a particular extent stabilise corner joints (and were loose to top it off) represent a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were only for older members of the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic elements are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not seem to have been put together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, 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 by its shapely proportions and delicate 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 model owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically 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 practices 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 cut away, and finer items would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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 popularised 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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