Out of all furniture items, the chair may be the imperative one. While most other forms (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including 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 overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic creation; it is historically a signifier of social place. Within the Medieval royal courts there were significant connotations between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been iconic of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture creation, the chair is used for a variety of various forms. There are chairs designed 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). In past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have changed to suit to growing human desires. Because of its particular connection with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in employ. While it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the various elements of a chair have been named likened to the parts of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary job of a chair is to support our human body, its worth is valued principally from how completely it fulfills this practical role. In the construction of the chair, the carpenter is limited for certain static rules and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed cultures that have created unique chair shapes, as expressive of the topmost work in the industries of skill and art. In those cultures, a note should 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 design, are today known from tombs. The first 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 designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was created. There was from our view no marked variation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The only variation existed in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured as an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that type stayed for much later periods of time. But the stool also was made for the character of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were worked with wood. The simple make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then appeared but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient object still existing but as seen from a trove of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be seen. These curved legs were most likely created of bent wood and were thus put under a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely solid and were particularly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans display designs of a denser and which appear to be a somewhat less delicately crafted klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos style can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of notable individuality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be tracked as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and artworks had been kept safe, detailing the insides and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing likeness to designs of past chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was constructed both with or without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one image, though, the stiles could be lightly curved above the arms to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). All three areas are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a particular extent support corner joints (and then were loose additionally) represent a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were kept only for older individuals, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decorative aspects are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto 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 put its signature on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by 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 forms—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of relatively thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popularised in large 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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