Of all furniture pieces, the chair might be the primary one. While most of the other objects (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed pieces such as the bench and sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic object; it historically was a symbol of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were social connotations between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to make do with a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has become iconic of superior rank, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In a furniture construction, the chair encompasses a variety of different forms. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has been evolved to fit to changing human desires. Due to its significant association with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when used. Although it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and regarded best by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the different areas of a chair are given labels like the areas of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary role of your chair is to support your body, its credit is judged basically on how well it does measure up to this practical function. In the design of the chair, the builder is restricted for particular static legislation and principal measurements. In these boundaries, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had made individual chair shapes, seen of the foremost work in the spheres of handling and creativity. From these civilisations, particular mention 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 construct of masterful craft, are today known from tomb findings. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs designed like those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular design was created. There was in our understanding no significant differentiation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The only difference existed in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the selection of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed for an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the stool persisted for much later periods of time. But the stool also then was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be noted, 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 form of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were formed of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came up at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient item still extant but from a large amount of pictorial material. The most recognisable is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them would be displayed. These unusual legs were most likely to have been crafted out of bent wood and were therefore had to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely strong and were particularly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek design; some casts of seated Romans display evidence of a more heavyset and in appearance somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of marked individuality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of sketches and works of art had been preserved, with images of the insides and outer parts of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing similarity to pictures of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been seen both with or without arms though never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one style, though, the stiles were slightly curved above the arms to suit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, the three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of the back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a restricted extent embolden corner joints (as well as being loose to top that off) are a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were reserved only for the senior persons in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced in engravings of interiors 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 found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not decided that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are 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 crafted in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and fine 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 is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of relatively thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference in several 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
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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