From all the furniture forms, the chair could be the primary one. While most other forms (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be used here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative types such as a bench and 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 definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic item; it historically is an indicator of social hierarchy. From the Medieval royal courts there were clear connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to make do with a stool. Since the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior standing, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
In its furniture form, the chair ranges from a range of different makes. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms has been perfected to suit to growing human needs. For its close connection with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when used. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly tested with a person using it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the different elements of a chair have been labeled according to the parts of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary job of the chair is to support a body, its worth is judged basically by how well it measures up to this practical function. Within the construction of a chair, the carpenter is limited in certain static legislation and principal measurements. Within these rules, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair is a period of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that have created individual chair forms, expressive of the topmost task in the arenas of craft and design. In those cultures, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of masterful design, are now a finding from tomb findings. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was obtained. There was from our knowledge no marked variation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The real change lied in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured to be an easily stored seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this chair stayed for much later periods of time. But the stool also then was made as the use of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are made out of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was seen again but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient fossil still extant but in a trove of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which can be seen. These odd legs were presumably manufactured with bent wood and were thus bore a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely solid and were particularly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; existing casts of seated Romans display designs of a denser and which appear to be a rather less delicately constructed klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were brought back in the Classicist period. The klismos influence can be seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of profound uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be traced as well as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of sketches and works of art had been protected, with images of the interiors and outer parts of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing likeness to designs of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms but never without a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one design, though, the stiles could be slightly curved by the arms for the purpose of conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). The three areas had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the style of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a limited capability stabilise corner joints (and were loose additionally) signify an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved for elderly individuals, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not look to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art project a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be seen 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. Although this type of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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 style—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of rather thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more upmarket examples may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over 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 well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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