From all the furniture pieces, the chair might be the primary one. While most other forms (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds like the bench and sofa, which might be regarded 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 craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic craft; it can also be symbolic of social place. Within the old royal courts there were significant differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. In the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been an indicator of superior dignity, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair encompasses a range of different forms. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs 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.
Our lifestyle has designated particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have adapted to conform to growing human requirements. From its significant link with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when utilised. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and judged best with a person using it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the several parts of a chair are given names likened to the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental role of the chair is to support the human body, its worth is tested basically on how completely it does fulfill this practical function. In the design of a chair, the designer is restricted under the static regulation and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair designer has great freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There were civilizations that made iconic chair types, expressive of the foremost object in the spheres of handling and creativity. Out of these cultures, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of expert craft, are today found from tomb findings. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs formed similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was obtained. There was in our view no noteworthy variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The real change exists in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was made as an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool this chair persevered til much later times. But the stool then also was designed for the role of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were created with wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappeared somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient object still in form but in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs would be displayed. These curving legs were most likely to be manufactured with bent wood and were in that case subjected to a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very durable and were clearly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; a number of statues of seated Romans show designs of a heavier and are a kind of less intricately built klismos. Both features, light and heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist period. The klismos influence is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular forms of notable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be followed as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and paintings was preserved, displaying the inside and outer parts of Chinese houses and their furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing familiarity to representations of ancient chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be designed both with and without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one style, it has been found, the stiles had been lightly curved over the arms so as to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, all three parts are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of the Chinese back splat had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a restricted ability embolden corner joints (and then are loose in the bargain) are an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs most likely were kept only for the senior persons in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto 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. Paintings show a kind 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 bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate 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 to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically 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 constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of quite thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and finer items would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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
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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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