From all the furniture items, the chair may be of most importance. While most other objects (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further kinds like a bench or sofa, which can be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it can also be semiotic of social ranking. From the old royal courts there were important differences between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to make do with a stool. From the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In its furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a number of different makes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from 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 have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types has been adapted to suit to differing human needs. Because of its significant relationship with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when utilised. Although it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly tested with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need the other. Thus the different parts of the chair were labeled like the parts of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal function of a chair is to support our body, its credit is valued primarily for how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the build of the chair, the designer is restricted with particular static rules and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that held distinctive chair shapes, as seen of the leading object in the arenas of handling and design. From such civilisations, special 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of masterful scheme, are known from findings made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular form was created. There seemed to be no significant differentiation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The main variation existed in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created for an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this type existed until much later points in time. But the stool also existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were made out of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then appeared but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient specimen still extant but as seen from a wealth of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs would be seen. These curving legs were likely to be manufactured of bent wood and were probably subjected to a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely stable and were particularly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; existing casts of seated Romans are designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were seen again during the Classicist time. The klismos style is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some brands of notable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of sketches and paintings has been protected, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been designed both with and without arms however never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, though, the stiles were delicately curved above the arms so as to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Each of the three areas were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of this back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would only to a limited extent reinforce corner joints (and then are loose as a result) are a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were reserved for elderly people in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been affixed by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings show a style 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 bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, 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 unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine 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 styles—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. 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 little 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 methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of rather thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and found favour 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 popularised 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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