Out of all furniture items, the chair may be paramount. While many other forms (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs like the bench or sofa, which should be considered 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 exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and aesthetic piece of art; it is also a signifier of social hierarchy. In the old royal courts there were social distinctions between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to cope with a stool. During the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior dignity, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In a furniture form, the chair holds a variety of variations. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have been perfected to suit to differing human desires. From its unique connection with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when being utilised. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly regarded with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter need the other. Thus the individual parts of a chair were given names as the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple function of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is tested firstly for how fully it does measure up to this practical job. Within the structure of a chair, the chair maker is bound for the static regulation and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There existed peoples that had significant chair types, expressions of the foremost craft in the spheres of skill and creativity. In those cultures, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled make, are today a finding from discoveries made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular construction was crafted. There was in our understanding no particular variation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The real variation lied in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured to be an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that chair stayed until much later periods of time. But the stool then was created as the role of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be found, 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 were made in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were created of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappears but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient specimen still existing but as in a variety of pictorial evidence. The most well known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those were shown. These odd legs were most likely executed with bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super stable and were visibly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; quite a few statues of seated Romans are examples of a heavier and apparently kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light or heavy, were seen again during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some forms of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of drawings and artworks had been preserved, showing the interior and exteriors of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing familiarity to styles of past chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles could be delicately curved above the arms in order to suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). All three limbs had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of a back splat had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would only to a particular capability support corner joints (and then were loose to top it off) signify a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs probably were allowed only for senior individuals, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decorative parts are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and held in place 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. Paintings project a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair might 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. Usually, the legs of the chair are 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 made in vast numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of quite thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and finer examples would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes 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 lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour in several 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
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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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