From all the furniture items, the chair could be the paramount one. While most of the other items (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be looked upon here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further chairs such as a bench and sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic item; it was historically symbolic of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were social differences between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to utilise a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior position, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised platform.
In a furniture construction, the chair ranges from a wealth of different forms. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has perfected to suit to growing human requirements. From its close association with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when being utilised. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged with a person using it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the individual parts of a chair were given names according to the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple role of a chair is to support your body, its worth is judged generally by how completely it fulfills this practical use. Within the construction of the chair, the carpenter is bound by certain static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair was dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that had distinctive chair types, expressive of the highest craft in the arenas of handling and design. In these civilisations, a mention 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful design, are today found from tomb findings. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular form was obtained. There was to our knowledge no notable differentiation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The general difference lies in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed as an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool this form stayed until much later points. But the stool then played the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are created out of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still existing but found in a trove of pictorial evidence. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which would be displayed. These strange legs were probably crafted from bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super solid and were visibly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; a number of models of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and in appearance slightly crudely designed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of considerable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be traced as far as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of sketches and artworks had been preserved, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting likeness to images of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms however always having the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, however, the stiles had been lightly curved on top of the arms so as to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). All three areas are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of a back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a particular capability reinforce corner joints (and are loose as a result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs presumably were only for senior members of the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not seem to have been constructed with either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously 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 this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket chairs might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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 reknowned 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 brands 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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