Of all furniture forms, the chair could be the imperative one. While most other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to developed types for example the bench and sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic creation; it is also semiotic of social placement. In the old royal courts there were plain differences between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to use a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior position, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As its furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a number of different models. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have been changed to match to changing human requirements. Because of its particular importance with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when being used. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and judged best by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the various limbs of a chair were given names according to the parts of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental work of the chair is to support the human body, its credit is tested generally from how suitably it does measure up to this practical function. Within the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is bound within the static legislation and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that held iconic chair types, as seen of the topmost object in the industries of handling and art. Among those civilisations, individual 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 expert scheme, are seen from tomb findings. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs designed similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular structure was created. There seemed to be no particular difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The real difference lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed for an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool this chair continued during much later periods. But the stool then was made as the role of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool being forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are created of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came up some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient specimen still existing but seen in a large amount of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were displayed. These curved legs were presumed to have been manufactured with bent wood and were probably subjected to a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very durable and were visibly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; a number of statues of seated Romans show designs of a heavier and in appearance rather less intricately crafted klismos. Both features, light and heavy, were seen again during the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of profound individuality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and paintings was preserved, displaying the interiors and exteriors of Chinese homes and their furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing likeness to representations of older chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two major chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is found both with and without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles are lightly curved on top of the arms to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Together, the three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the back splat had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a particular extent stabilise corner joints (and then were loose to top that off) signify a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited form. 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 habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were reserved only for the senior family members, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic issues are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been held together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised with 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 had its mark on the chair. Works of art display a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same period, held 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 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 kind of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by 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 of forms—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of relatively thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. 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 occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular 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 commonly known 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 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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