Of all furniture objects, the chair might be the most imperative. While most of the other forms (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to developed forms for example a bench and sofa, which may be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it is also a signifier of social ranking. In the historical royal courts there were plain signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to cope with a stool. During the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior position, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a variety of variations. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds have changed to match to changing human needs. For its significant importance with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when being used. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and evaluated by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the different limbs of the chair have been given names like the parts of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental function of a chair is to support the human body, its worth is judged firstly by how fully it does fulfill this practical function. Within the manufacture of a chair, the builder is restricted for the static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these restrictions, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There were cultures that made distinctive chair shapes, expressions of the topmost object in the areas of technique and creativity. Within such peoples, individual 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of expert craft, are today known from findings made in tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs shaped not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular form was made. There was from our view no marked variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only change was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was crafted as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that type stayed around during much later periods. But the stool also existed in the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are made out of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappears but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this form is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient item still in form but seen in a variety of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs are displayed. These unique legs were thought to have been executed in bent wood and were probably subjected to a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very solid and were plainly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; a number of casts of seated Romans are evidence of a thicker and are a rather crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were brought back in the Classicist era. The klismos style is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some kinds of notable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be followed as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of images and artworks has been preserved, showing the interior and outer parts of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been constructed both with and without arms though always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles were marginally curved above the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its chairback). All three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat then had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a limited extent embolden corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top that off) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs probably were allowed only for older family members, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not look to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is displayed in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The style 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 was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. 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 small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and found favour in large 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
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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