Out of all furniture needs, the chair may be of the most importance. While the majority of other forms (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair was said here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative items like a bench and sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it is also a symbol of social ranking. In the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior status, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As a furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a range of different forms. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has designated particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types has adapted to match to changing human requirements. Due to its significant association with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when being used. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and tested with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the individual elements of a chair have been given names according to the limbs of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary role of the chair is to support the human body, its credit is evaluated principally for how suitably it does measure up to this practical function. Within the build of the chair, the carpenter is restricted within particular static laws and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair covers an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that have created iconic chair shapes, expressive of the premier work in the industries of skill and aesthetics. Among those peoples, special 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled make, are found from discoveries made in tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs structured like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular form was created. There was from our understanding no noteworthy differentiation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The real variation existed in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed for an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that form continued for much later periods of time. But the stool then took on the character of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were created from wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, can be seen somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient object still extant but as seen in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area 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 which would be shown. These strange legs were most likely to be manufactured with bent wood and were in that case bore huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely durable and were particularly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; some casts of seated Romans offer evidence of a heavier and are a somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist period. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some brands of marked individuality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be followed as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of images and works of art had been kept safe, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing familiarity to images of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is seen both with and without arms though always with the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles are slightly curved above the arms to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). All three areas had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a restricted ability stabilise corner joints (and were loose in the bargain) represent a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs most likely were only for older people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not look to have been fixed together by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised on 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 mark on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, held 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 inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 form—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and finer items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 popular 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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