Of all furniture items, the chair may be primary. While many other forms (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to further kinds like a bench or sofa, which might be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic artwork; it is historically semiotic of social rank. At the past royal courts there were significant signifiers between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. During the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior position, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a variety of various models. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes has been evolved to suit to growing human requirements. From its particular connection with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when in employ. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly regarded with a person using it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the various areas of a chair have been given names corresponding to the limbs of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental work of the chair is to support a human body, its value is tested firstly on how suitably it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the creation of the chair, the designer is bound for particular static regulation and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There were cultures that have created unique chair types, expressive of the topmost object in the spheres of skill and art. Among those cultures, individual 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful craft, are now known from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs crafted similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular design was made. There seems to be no significant change between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The only variation was in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the kind stayed around for much later periods. But the stool then also played the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation 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 worked of wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, was seen again but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still around but seen in a variety of pictorial objects. The archetype is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are seen. These curving legs were presumed to be created out of bent wood and were likely to have been put under huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very durable and were overtly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; evidence of casts of seated Romans offer evidence of a heavier and in appearance slightly crudely crafted klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were revived in the Classicist period. The klismos style is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular types of profound iconicism around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be traced as far back as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and paintings had been protected, showing the inside and outside of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing familiarity to styles of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be seen both with or without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles could be delicately curved on top of the arms in order to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three limbs had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of a back splat had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a limited ability support corner joints (and then were loose to top it off) indicate a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs presumably were kept for older persons in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not look to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Paintings display a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large numbers, as surmisable 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 its elegant 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 form—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting 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 conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer items might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and found 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
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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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