Of all furniture items, the chair might be of most importance. While many other items (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to complex types for example 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 evidently distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic piece of art; it can also be an indicator of social place. At the Medieval royal courts there were significant differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. From the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become iconic of superior rank, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As a furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a variety of variations. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, 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 contemporary lifestyle has designated particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been adapted to conform to differing human requirements. For its unique relationship with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when in use. Though it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and regarded best by a person using it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the different areas of the chair are labeled like the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious work of your chair is to support a body, its worth is valued primarily for how completely it does fulfill this practical function. Within the build of a chair, the chair maker is limited within certain static regulations and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There are peoples that had made iconic chair shapes, as expressive of the premier task in the arenas of handling and aesthetics. Out of such peoples, individual note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful make, are now seen from tomb discoveries. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs structured not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was obtained. There was in our knowledge no marked differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The main variation lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this form persevered during much later days. But the stool then was made as the role of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from 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 are constructed in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are worked from wood. The easy build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then appeared but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this kind is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient fossil still extant but from a large amount of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs can be displayed. These curved legs were most likely crafted out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very solid and were overtly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek design; existing casts of seated Romans display examples of a heavier and are a rather less delicately built klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were revived during the Classicist time. The klismos design is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special forms of profound iconicism in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as long as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of sketches and paintings has been preserved, with images of the interior and exterior of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing similarity to styles of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair is seen both with and without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles are slightly curved by the arms to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). Each of the three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a particular limit reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top that off) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs probably were kept for elderly persons in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The structure and decoration parts are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual items do not seem to have been held together with either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings project a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be seen in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious 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 style—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of quite thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more expensive items may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found 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 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 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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