Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair might be of most importance. While many other items (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to further pieces such as 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 definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic creation; it can also be an indicator of social placement. In the Medieval royal courts there were important distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior standing, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a range of various makes. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden 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). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has developed particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have adapted to match to growing human needs. For its significant relationship with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when utilised. 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 understood and fairly regarded by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different parts of the chair have been named according to the names of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple job of the chair is to support the human body, its worth is tested generally by how suitably it measures up to this practical use. In the structure of the chair, the maker is limited within some static regulations and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There are civilizations that held distinctive chair types, expressive of the topmost object in the arenas of skill and design. Out of these such cultures, a 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of expert design, are found from tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular structure was created. There appeared to be no significant differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The main change lies in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was designed as an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this type stayed around until much later points. But the stool also then was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are made from wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was seen again somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient object still existing but as seen from a trove of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs are shown. These strange legs were considered to have been manufactured from bent wood and were as such had to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely durable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek style; designs of models of seated Romans show chairs of a denser and apparently rather less delicately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist time. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some kinds of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and artworks has been protected, showing the interior and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing similarity to representations of older chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be seen both with and without arms although always having a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles were delicately curved above the arms to sit correctly with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, all three areas are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the Chinese back splat had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a particular extent embolden corner joints (and then were loose into the bargain) indicate a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were only for the senior people in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks display a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable amounts, 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 design asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and allows 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of fairly thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive examples might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won 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 popular 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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