Out of each of the furniture forms, the chair may be the most important. While many other forms (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair was used here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further forms such as the bench and sofa, which might be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic object; it was historically a signifier of social rank. In the historical royal courts there were social differences between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. During the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior rank, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a number of different purposes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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.
Modern day living has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds has adapted to suit to different human needs. Due to its unique association with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when utilised. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are items inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged best with a person using it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the various parts of the chair were labeled according to the elements of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple job of your chair is to support a body, its value is valued principally from how suitably it fulfills this practical job. Within the construction of the chair, the maker is bound by some static laws and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair covered a period of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had made significant chair shapes, as seen of the premier craft in the spheres of handling and design. From such civilisations, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of expert craft, were known from tomb findings. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular structure was made. There was to all appearances no marked variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The simple variation lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was developed for an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this stool persisted til much later periods of time. But the stool also took on the role of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool ignored or 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 decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are worked of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappeared but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still existing but as seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The most well known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs can be displayed. These curving legs were probably executed out of bent wood and were as such put under extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely solid and were visibly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; existing casts of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and in appearance rather more crudely crafted klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist era. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special brands of profound individuality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and artworks had been kept safe, with images of the inside and exteriors of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair was seen both with and without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms in order to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). Each of the three sections were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the style of a back splat had an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a particular ability support corner joints (and are loose in the result) signify a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were allowed only for older persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not look to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings project a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of the inside 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 type of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The style 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 of forms—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of quite thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popularised 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 products 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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