Out of all furniture forms, the chair might be primary. While the majority of other pieces (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further pieces such as a bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic piece; it historically is symbolic of social ranking. From the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to sit on a stool. During the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior status, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised platform.
In a furniture creation, the chair ranges from a range of different models. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes has been adapted to conform to different human needs. Because of its unique connection with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in employ. While it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly judged by a person using it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the different areas of a chair were labeled as the elements of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple job of the chair is to support our human body, its value is tested basically for how suitably it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the structure of the chair, the builder is bound for particular static laws and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There existed societies that had unique chair forms, expressions of the premier craft in the industries of skill and aesthetics. Out of such peoples, a mention should 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 construct of careful make, were seen from tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular structure was crafted. There appeared to be no noteworthy variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The simple change lied in the level of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured for an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool that stool stayed around until much later times. But the stool also was designed for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were worked out of wood. The plain build of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappeared some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient specimen still extant but seen in a wealth of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are visible. These curving legs were presumed to have been executed out of bent wood and were thus put under extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super solid and were particularly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; quite a few statues of seated Romans offer chairs of a thicker and apparently rather crudely designed klismos. Both features, light and heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist period. The klismos design is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular brands of profound uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be traced as far back as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of drawings and paintings has been protected, showing the inside and exterior of Chinese homes and their furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to pictures of older chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms though always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Together, the three limbs are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a particular extent embolden corner joints (and were loose as a result) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs most likely were only for the senior people in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings project a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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 of forms—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits 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 little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer designs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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