Out of all furniture forms, the chair may be paramount. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are intended 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 developed items such as the bench or sofa, which might be seen 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 curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it historically was symbolic of social place. From the historical royal courts there were significant distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior standing, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a variety of various models. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have changed to match to different human desires. Due to its significant relationship with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when being utilised. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and regarded best by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the individual elements of a chair were given labels as the areas of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first work of a chair is to support the body, its credit is tested firstly for how completely it measures up to this practical use. In the creation of a chair, the builder is bound within particular static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that held distinctive chair shapes, expressive of the highest work in the areas of skill and design. In these societies, a mention should 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 upshot of masterful design, were seen from tomb findings. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs structured as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular form was created. There seems to be no marked variation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The simple difference existed in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed to be an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the chair persevered til much later days. But the stool also was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are created with wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, also appeared but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient object still in form but as seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs are seen. These creative legs were thought to be manufactured with bent wood and were as such put under a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super stable and were clearly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; quite a few models of seated Romans offer chairs of a thicker and are a rather less intricately built klismos. Both designs, the light and the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound individuality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as far as the progression 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 has been protected, showing the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting likeness to styles of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was seen both with or without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles could be slightly curved by the arms in order to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Together, the three areas are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the back splat later had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a particular extent embolden corner joints (and then were loose to top that off) indicate a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs presumably were allowed only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic issues are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings show a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small 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, in the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be seen in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely 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 developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres 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 tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of relatively thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood can 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 sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference 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 commonly known 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 styles 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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