Out of all furniture items, the chair could be the most imperative. While the majority of other pieces (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative types for example the bench or sofa, which may be viewed 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 craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic artwork; it historically is a symbol of social place. In the past royal courts there were social distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become iconic of superior status, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture form, the chair ranges from a wealth of different models. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs used for birth (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. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has evolved to match to differing human requirements. For its unique connection with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when in employ. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and judged best with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the several elements of a chair were named as the parts of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental work of the chair is to support the body, its worth is valued primarily by how fully it measures up to this practical job. In the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is limited within the static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that made individual chair shapes, expressions of the principal work in the industries of skill and design. Within these such cultures, particular 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled craft, are today a finding from tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs structured akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular form was created. There was from our understanding no noteworthy variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The real difference exists in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured as an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool this stool continued til much later periods. But the stool then was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are formed out of wood. The plain build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient specimen still around but in a variety of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be displayed. These unique legs were understood to have been executed from bent wood and were thus had to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were overtly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; evidence of casts of seated Romans display designs of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of less delicately constructed klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos style can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of profound uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be followed as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of drawings and works of art had been kept safe, displaying the interior and outside of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing similarity to representations of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two major chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was seen both with and without arms however always with the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, it has been found, the stiles could be lightly curved over the arms to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, the three areas are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of this back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a particular limit support corner joints (and were loose in the result) indicate an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved only for the senior family members, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decorative parts are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined 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 related board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same period, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be seen in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, 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 produced in impressive quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with its elegant 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 form—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more expensive examples might 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 upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the favourite 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 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 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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