Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be the primary one. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was regarded here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to further chairs including the 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 evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic item; it historically is an indicator of social hierarchy. In the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as iconic of superior status, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is employed for a range of variations. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has been changed to fit to growing human uses. Because of its unique importance with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when in use. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly judged by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the several parts of a chair were given names corresponding to the names of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental work of your chair is to support your body, its credit is tested firstly from how suitably it does measure up to this practical function. In the structure of a chair, the designer is restricted for some static regulation and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an era of several thousand years. There were societies that made distinctive chair forms, as expressive of the principal craft in the areas of technique and art. Out of these such societies, 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of masterful craft, are seen from tomb discoveries. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular design was obtained. There was in our view no marked change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only difference exists in the complexity of ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured to be an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool that type continued until much later days. But the stool then also was made as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were created with wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient specimen still extant but found in a trove of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them could be visible. These creative legs were probably manufactured out of bent wood and were in that case had great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; existing models of seated Romans offer examples of a denser and are a somewhat less delicately designed klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were popularised during the Classicist period. The klismos design is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be charted as far as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of drawings and works of art was protected, showing the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting resemblance to styles of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be constructed both with or without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, however, the stiles had been delicately curved over the arms to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its back). Together, all three sections were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a particular limit reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) indicate a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs most likely were allowed only for the senior family members, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been held together by either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large quantities, 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 framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of rather thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more expensive items might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over 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 reknowned 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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