From all the furniture pieces, the chair may be primary. While most other pieces (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to further kinds like a bench and 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 overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it can also be an indicator of social placement. Within the old royal courts there were important connotations between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As a furniture form, the chair ranges from a range of different makes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has been adapted to fit to different human requirements. Due to its significant link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when being utilised. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and evaluated by a person using it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the individual limbs of the chair are labeled as the parts of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal role of the chair is to support our human body, its credit is judged primarily on how completely it does measure up to this practical role. In the construction of a chair, the designer is limited within some static regulation and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair designer has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that had iconic chair types, seen of the highest work in the spheres of technique and creativity. Among these such societies, a mention must 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 structures of skilled design, were found from findings made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs shaped as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular structure was made. There appeared to be no particular difference from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The simple difference lied in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created for an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this chair persevered til much later points. But the stool also then took on the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be found, 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 made in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were formed from wood. The plain make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was then seen at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient fossil still around but as seen in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The archetype is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be displayed. These curved legs were likely to be executed of bent wood and were thus had great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super durable and were plainly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; evidence of casts of seated Romans display examples of a denser and are a kind of crudely designed klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos chair is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some types of marked individuality of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be traced as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of sketches and artworks was protected, displaying the inside and outside of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting familiarity to pictures of past chairs.
As in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is designed both with and without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms so as to suit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). Together, all three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of this back splat had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a limited limit reinforce corner joints (and were loose in the bargain) signify a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs most likely were reserved for the senior persons in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed 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. While this style of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of quite thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more expensive items can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
During 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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