From all the furniture objects, 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 can be viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to developed items such as a bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic artwork; it is also semiotic of social rank. From the old royal courts there were significant signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. In the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen a signifier of superior status, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair encompasses a variety of various makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has been changed to conform to different human requirements. For its particular relationship with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when in employ. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is best seen and evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the individual areas of a chair are given labels like the names of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple job of a chair is to support our body, its value is evaluated generally from how suitably it measures up to this practical role. Within the manufacture of the chair, the maker is limited with particular static regulations and principal measurements. Under these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted dates of several thousand years. There were societies that made unique chair shapes, as seen of the topmost object in the industries of craft and creativity. Within these such societies, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert make, are today seen from tomb findings. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was crafted. There was in our understanding no marked difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The simple difference was in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the chair continued until much later points. But the stool then was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are made with wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then appeared at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this form is the folding stool, of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient item still in form but as seen in a variety of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are shown. These curving legs were understood to have been manufactured in bent wood and were probably put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were plainly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; some statues of seated Romans display chairs of a thicker and apparently somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special types of considerable originality around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be followed as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of sketches and artworks has been protected, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing similarity to designs of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, two chair designs dominated in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be designed both with or without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one style, though, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms in order to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three limbs were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs most likely were allowed only for senior family members, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Artworks show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the preference 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 popularised 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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