From all the furniture objects, the chair may be the most important. While many other pieces (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed makes for example a bench or 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 distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it was historically a signifier of social standing. In the historical royal courts there were social connotations between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior rank, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As its furniture form, the chair is utilised for a range of various purposes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have been changed to fit to changing human requirements. For its close connection with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when being used. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and regarded best by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the different elements of a chair are named according to the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of your chair is to support the body, its credit is tested principally on how completely it does fulfill this practical use. In the construction of the chair, the maker is bound by the static rules and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that have created individual chair types, as expressive of the topmost task in the arenas of handling and design. From those cultures, special note can 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 upshot of expert scheme, are now found from tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs structured akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular structure was made. There was from our understanding no noteworthy change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The only change was in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was made to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the type persevered til much later points in time. But the stool also then was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were formed out of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, appeared but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient object still extant but as seen in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs could be displayed. These strange legs were thought to have been created out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely strong and were clearly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; designs of casts of seated Romans offer examples of a denser and apparently kind of more crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of profound individuality in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be traced as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of images and paintings has been preserved, displaying the inside and exteriors of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting likeness to designs of past chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been designed both with and without arms though never missing a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it has been seen, the stiles had been slightly curved over the arms in order to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Together, all three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a limited extent support corner joints (and were loose additionally) indicate a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs presumably were allowed only for the senior persons in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not look to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art display a design of chair with a relatively brusque 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 little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate 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 forms—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of rather thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour 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 popular 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 brands 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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