Out of all furniture pieces, the chair might be primary. While most of the other forms (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to further kinds like a bench and sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic object; it historically was a symbol of social place. At the past royal courts there were important differences between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. From the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been an indicator of superior rank, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In a furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a number of various models. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has been perfected to match to evolving human needs. Because of its close importance with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when in use. While it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various parts of a chair have been named likened to the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental role of a chair is to support a body, its credit is judged firstly from how fully it does measure up to this practical function. Within the creation of the chair, the builder is restricted with certain static legislation and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There are societies that had significant chair types, as expressive of the topmost endeavour in the arenas of handling and design. From such civilisations, individual 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of expert design, were known from tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs shaped similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular form was made. There was from our knowledge no noteworthy change between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The main change existed in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted to be an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that kind stayed during much later periods of time. But the stool then took on the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were created with wood. The easy build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came up at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still in form but found in a trove of pictorial evidence. The most recognisable is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be visible. These strange legs were most likely created out of bent wood and were therefore had a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely strong and were plainly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; evidence of statues of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be traced as long as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of drawings and works of art had been protected, displaying the insides and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing similarity to images of ancient chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be seen both with or without arms although always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, however, the stiles had been slightly curved by the arms so as to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). Each of the three sections had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of a back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a particular limit reinforce corner joints (and then are loose as a result) are an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs presumably were kept only for older individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be found in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres 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 small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with very 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; cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and won favour 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 popularised 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 versions 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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