Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair could be the imperative one. While many other items (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the common sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs such as the bench and sofa, which can be looked upon 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 interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic artwork; it was also a signifier of social status. In the Medieval royal courts there were social connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. From the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become a signifier of superior standing, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In its furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a range of different makes. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds has been evolved to conform to evolving human uses. Because of its unique link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when being used. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and judged by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several parts of the chair were labeled like the names of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple purpose of a chair is to support a human body, its credit is evaluated generally for how suitably it fulfills this practical job. In the build of the chair, the designer is restricted by some static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There existed peoples that created unique chair shapes, as expressive of the premier endeavour in the areas of handling and aesthetics. Out of these such societies, individual mention 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of careful design, are now known from tomb findings. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular form was crafted. There was from our knowledge no particular differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The real variation lies in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured for an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the type stayed until much later points in time. But the stool then was created for the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today 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 in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are made of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came up at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient item still in form but as seen from a large amount of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were seen. These strange legs were understood to be created out of bent wood and were probably put under extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very strong and were particularly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; existing models of seated Romans display designs of a heavier and apparently rather crudely designed klismos. Both designs, the light or the heavy, were brought back within the Classicist period. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special brands of marked originality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as well as in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of drawings and artworks has been preserved, showing the inside and exteriors of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing likeness to images of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one kind, however, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms in order to sit correctly with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). All three parts were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat later had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a restricted ability embolden corner joints (as well as being loose as well) signify a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were only for elderly persons in the family, for they were held in great respect.
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 dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is displayed in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the innovation actually originated 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 surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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 styles—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive designs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal 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 popularised and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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