Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair could be the primary one. While most of the other pieces (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to further kinds for example a bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic piece; it is also semiotic of social hierarchy. At the Medieval royal courts there were significant connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to use a stool. Since the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior status, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As a furniture purpose, the chair holds a number of various forms. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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 modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types have perfected to conform to changing human requirements. From its close association with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when utilised. Although it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly evaluated with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several limbs of the chair were given names like the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental role of the chair is to support your body, its worth is judged primarily for how well it fulfills this practical function. Within the structure of the chair, the chair maker is bound for certain static laws and principal measurements. In these boundaries, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There are cultures that made distinctive chair shapes, as expressions of the highest endeavour in the areas of craft and art. Among those civilisations, individual note must 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of expert design, are 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 had four legs shaped not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular structure was obtained. There was from our knowledge no noteworthy differentiation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The main difference exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made for an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the chair continued til much later periods of time. But the stool then was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are made of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then appeared but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still existing but from a trove of pictorial items. The significant kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those would be displayed. These curving legs were most likely to be manufactured from bent wood and were therefore bore extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely stable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; some casts of seated Romans are designs of a thicker and are a kind of less intricately constructed klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist time. The klismos influence is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special types of marked individuality within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of images and paintings has been kept safe, showing the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing likeness to images of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was constructed both with or without arms but always with the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles could be lightly curved above the arms to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Each of the three limbs were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a restricted ability embolden corner joints (and are loose to top it off) represent a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs probably were only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not seem to have been affixed by either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings project 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 show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced 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. Although this kind of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as created 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 leisure and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved 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 those employ wood of fairly thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised 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
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 versions 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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