Of all furniture needs, the chair could be the primary one. While the majority of other objects (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds including the bench and sofa, which should be regarded 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 interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic artwork; it can also be semiotic of social standing. From the historical royal courts there were clear connotations between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. During the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior position, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
In its furniture creation, the chair ranges from a wealth of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes has been adapted to fit to differing human uses. For its significant importance with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when being utilised. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the various parts of the chair have been named like the areas of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal role of the chair is to support the body, its credit is tested principally from how well it fulfills this practical use. Within the design of a chair, the chair maker is limited in particular static laws and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that created significant chair forms, as expressive of the foremost work in the arenas of skill and creativity. Out of these societies, individual mention 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of expert make, are now known from findings made in tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was crafted. There was in our understanding no significant differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The main change existed in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this stool stayed until much later points in time. But the stool also then was made for the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were made of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came up but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient item still around but as found in a large amount of pictorial material. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be seen. These unusual legs were likely to be crafted from bent wood and were thus subjected to a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were overtly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; some casts of seated Romans offer examples of a thicker and which appear to be a kind of less delicately built klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were revived in the Classicist era. The klismos style is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of considerable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be traced as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and paintings has been kept, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese houses and their furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing similarity to images of previous chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms though always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles had been delicately curved above the arms to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). All three parts are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the back splat had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs probably were reserved for older people, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined 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 tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is found in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive 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 to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer examples would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. 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; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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
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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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