From all the furniture objects, the chair may be the paramount one. While many other forms (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be said here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces for example a bench and sofa, which should be viewed 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 curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it was also semiotic of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were significant distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to sit on a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior position, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture construction, the chair holds a range of different models. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types have evolved to fit to differing human needs. Because of its unique link with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when in use. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen and regarded best by a person using it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various limbs of a chair have been given labels as the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal role of your chair is to support your body, its credit is evaluated basically for how completely it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the structure of a chair, the builder is bound under the static law and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that had made significant chair shapes, as expressive of the topmost endeavour in the areas of skill and creativity. Among these societies, individual 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of careful scheme, are seen from tomb discoveries. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular design was crafted. There was from our knowledge no noteworthy differentiation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The simple change lies in the level of ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the type stayed until much later points in time. But the stool then also took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are formed out of wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen again somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient item still in form but in a trove of pictorial material. The iconic kind is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are shown. These curving legs were presumed to be crafted of bent wood and were as such needed to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very stable and were plainly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; some casts of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and apparently rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were popularised during the Classicist period. The klismos style is used in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound originality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of images and artworks has been preserved, showing the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing familiarity to representations of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been constructed both with and without arms however never without its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles are lightly curved by the arms to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). All three parts had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a particular extent support corner joints (and then are loose into the bargain) indicate a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs most likely were allowed only for senior individuals, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic elements are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been put together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks 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 between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be seen in engravings of 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. While this style of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate 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 is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive examples would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 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 products 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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