Out of all furniture objects, the chair could be the paramount one. While many other items (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be looked upon here in the common sense, from stool to throne to developed types for example the bench or sofa, which might be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic object; it is historically a signifier of social standing. In the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior position, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture creation, the chair is employed for a range of various models. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes have been adapted to match to growing human requirements. Because of its unique association with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being used. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the several limbs of the chair are labeled likened to the areas of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal work of the chair is to support the body, its credit is evaluated basically for how well it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the manufacture of the chair, the chair maker is restricted by some static legislation and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extends over a period of several thousand years. There were societies that created distinctive chair types, as seen of the premier endeavour in the areas of craft and aesthetics. From such civilisations, particular 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of expert design, are now known from discoveries made in tombs. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs formed as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular design was created. There seemed to be no significant change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The general variation was in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made for an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the stool existed during much later periods of time. But the stool also was created for the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were made out of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappears somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient object still existing but found in a variety of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place 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 were visible. These unique legs were presumed to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were likely to have been put under a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very stable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; a number of casts of seated Romans offer examples of a denser and are a kind of less delicately built klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and artworks was kept safe, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to designs of ancient chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been designed both with and without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms so as to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). Together, the three sections had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a particular capability support corner joints (and were loose to top it off) indicate an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved only for older people in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decoration elements are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not look to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Works of art project a kind 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 small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same era, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of the interior 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 design of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually was born 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 patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with 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 styles—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of rather thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite 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 reknowned 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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