From all the furniture pieces, the chair might be the most imperative. While most of the other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex types including the bench or sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic creation; it historically was a symbol of social status. Within the old royal courts there were significant connotations between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to sit on a stool. In the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior rank, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
As a furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a number of different purposes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms have evolved to match to differing human requirements. Because of its particular association with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when being utilised. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and regarded best with a person using it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the various elements of a chair were named as the names of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary function of your chair is to support the body, its value is judged basically from how suitably it does measure up to this practical role. In the construction of the chair, the designer is restricted with particular static regulation and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There were societies that held unique chair forms, seen of the foremost work in the arenas of craft and art. From these such societies, special note 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful scheme, were known from findings made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular structure was created. There was to all appearances no particular differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The real change lies in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was made as an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool this form stayed until much later points in time. But the stool then also took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be found, 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 in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are created from wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen again somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient fossil still around but in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The most well known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs are displayed. These unusual legs were most likely manufactured from bent wood and were in that case needed to bear huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely strong and were visibly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; existing statues of seated Romans display chairs of a thicker and which appear to be a slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and artworks was protected, detailing the inside and exterior of Chinese households and the furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing similarity to designs of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been seen both with or without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, however, the stiles could be slightly curved over the arms in order to sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). All three areas were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the Chinese back splat had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a restricted ability support corner joints (and furthermore were loose into the bargain) represent a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs probably were kept for elderly members of the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration parts are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and fixed in position 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. Works of art display 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, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, 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 patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its elegant 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 form—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort 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 little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made 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 of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer examples can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the favourite 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
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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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