Out of all furniture items, the chair might be the imperative one. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to further items including the bench and sofa, which should be considered 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 interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic piece; it can also be a symbol of social ranking. Within the past royal courts there were clear signifiers between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. Since the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior rank, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In a furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a variety of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are 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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has adapted to match to different human needs. Because of its particular association with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when utilised. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and tested by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the various areas of the chair have been labeled corresponding to the names of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic purpose of your chair is to support a body, its value is valued basically from how well it fulfills this practical job. Within the design of the chair, the builder is restricted with the static laws and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that created iconic chair types, as seen of the leading object in the arenas of handling and art. In those civilisations, individual note 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 items of skilled design, are now seen from tomb findings. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular construction was obtained. There appears to be no marked variation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The real change lies in the type of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the form existed until much later days. But the stool also played the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were worked out of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, can be seen somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient fossil still in form but as seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them were shown. These curving legs were presumed to have been created in bent wood and were thus needed to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super stable and were plainly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; evidence of casts of seated Romans display designs of a heavier and are a rather less delicately constructed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos style is found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be followed as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and works of art has been kept safe, with images of the inside and exterior of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing resemblance to designs of past chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be designed both with and without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, however, the stiles were slightly curved above the arms so as to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, all three sections had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of a back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a limited ability embolden corner joints (and were loose in the bargain) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were allowed only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Works of art project 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 bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be displayed in engravings of 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 type of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine 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 styles—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its 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. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and finer items would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference in several 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
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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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