Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair might be the primary one. While most of the other forms (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to further forms like a bench or sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic piece of art; it was also a symbol of social ranking. From the Medieval royal courts there were significant signifiers between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has become iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In a furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a wealth of variations. 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 past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds have changed to fit to growing human requirements. For its particular association with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when being utilised. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and judged best with a person using it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the individual elements of the chair are given labels according to the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious work of your chair is to support your body, its value is tested generally from how fully it does measure up to this practical function. Within the structure of the chair, the chair maker is restricted for some static rules and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There are societies that made distinctive chair types, as seen of the principal craft in the spheres of handling and design. Within these such peoples, special mention 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 construct of careful make, are today found from tomb discoveries. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs designed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular design was created. There was from our understanding no significant difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The general variation was in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured to be an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that stool persisted til much later points. But the stool also was designed as the task of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today 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 were made in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are formed from wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came up but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient object still in form but as seen from a large amount of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those can be shown. These curving legs were most likely created in bent wood and were probably subjected to huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; evidence of models of seated Romans display examples of a thicker and apparently kind of less delicately crafted klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist period. The klismos influence is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special forms of considerable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be tracked as far back as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and paintings has been preserved, with images of the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing likeness to pictures of older chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be found both with or without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one design, however, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms in order to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). All three sections had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of a back splat had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a limited extent support corner joints (and then were loose to top it off) represent an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were kept for elderly individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The structure and aesthetic parts are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be found in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the style actually began 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 patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with 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 of forms—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of rather thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and finer chairs can 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 any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 popularised 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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