From each of the furniture forms, the chair may be primary. While most of the other pieces (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the common sense, from stool to throne to complex items for example the bench or sofa, which might be regarded 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 interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or an aesthetic item; it historically is a signifier of social rank. At the old royal courts there were important connotations between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to use a stool. During the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been iconic of superior position, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As its furniture creation, the chair is used for a wealth of different makes. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has evolved to fit to evolving human uses. Because of its particular association with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when in employ. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly judged by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the various limbs of the chair were given labels like the parts of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental purpose of a chair is to support your body, its value is judged firstly from how suitably it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of the chair, the maker is restricted under particular static rules and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair designer has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over a period of several thousand years. There were peoples that have created individual chair types, as seen of the highest object in the spheres of skill and design. Within these societies, individual 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of careful make, were a finding from tomb findings. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs shaped akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular construction was obtained. There was to our knowledge no noteworthy variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The simple change existed in the brand of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool this form stayed until much later periods. But the stool then was designed as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the form of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came again at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient item still in form but as seen from a variety of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be visible. These unique legs were most likely manufactured of bent wood and were therefore subjected to huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely stable and were visibly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; evidence of casts of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and in appearance somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos style can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special kinds of notable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be traced as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of images and artworks was protected, displaying the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and their furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a trove of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to representations of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be seen both with and without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one style, it has been found, the stiles were marginally curved over the arms so as to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). All three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of a back splat later had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (and were loose additionally) indicate a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved only for elderly people, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decoration aspects are combined in a style 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 fixed with either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant proportions and expensive 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, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of rather thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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