Out of all furniture needs, the chair might be the primary one. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms such as the bench and sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic object; it was historically a signifier of social standing. At the Medieval royal courts there were clear distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to sit on a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
In its furniture purpose, the chair holds a variety of various models. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have perfected to conform to growing human uses. Due to its close link with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when used. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly judged with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the different limbs of a chair were labeled corresponding to the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of a chair is to support your body, its worth is valued firstly for how well it fulfills this practical job. Within the creation of the chair, the designer is limited within some static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that have created unique chair forms, as expressive of the topmost craft in the arenas of craft and aesthetics. Out of those cultures, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of careful craft, are now a finding from tomb discoveries. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs structured akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular construction was made. There was to our knowledge no significant variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The real variation exists in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this type stayed during much later periods of time. But the stool then was designed as the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are made with wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, can be seen some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient item still in form but in a large amount of pictorial material. The archetype is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be shown. These odd legs were likely to have been manufactured from bent wood and were thus put under extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very stable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans offer chairs of a heavier and are a rather crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were brought back in the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some kinds of notable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be charted as far as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of sketches and artworks was preserved, showing the insides and exterior of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing similarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair was constructed both with or without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Each of the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of this back splat later had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a particular limit embolden corner joints (and are loose additionally) are a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were kept only for the senior family members, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been held together by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art project a type 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 show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same era, possessed 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 the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of 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 progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes the 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. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of fairly thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. 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 in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 well-known 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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