From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be primary. While many other objects (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be said here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces including the bench or sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic creation; it historically was symbolic of social standing. In the Medieval royal courts there were social distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to squat on a stool. From the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior rank, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair can be employed for a number of various forms. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs used for birth (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 four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has been perfected to match to evolving human uses. For its unique association with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when used. Although it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the various areas of a chair were given names like the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of your chair is to support your body, its value is judged principally on how suitably it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the creation of a chair, the builder is bound for particular static legislation and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over a period of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had iconic chair forms, seen of the foremost craft in the industries of handling and creativity. Out of these cultures, particular 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful design, were a finding from discoveries made in tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular form was made. There seems to be no marked variation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The real change was in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed to be an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool that kind existed during much later points in time. But the stool then was designed as the task of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were made of wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came again but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient object still in form but from a wealth of pictorial material. The iconic kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those can be visible. These creative legs were presumed to be manufactured of bent wood and were probably subjected to extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super solid and were visibly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; a number of casts of seated Romans offer chairs of a thicker and in appearance somewhat less intricately built klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were seen again during the Classicist period. The klismos influence is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable iconicism around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of images and paintings was preserved, detailing the interior and outer parts of Chinese homes and their furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing resemblance to designs of previous chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair is found both with or without arms though never missing its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, though, the stiles were delicately curved by the arms to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). All three parts are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of the back splat later had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and then were loose to top that off) represent an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs probably were kept only for older individuals in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately joined 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 resultant effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting 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 are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of quite thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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