From all the furniture needs, the chair could be the imperative one. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the common sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds such as the bench or 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 clearly defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic piece; it historically was a signifier of social rank. In the past royal courts there were significant signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior standing, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a range of various models. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (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 can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types has been adapted to fit to evolving human desires. Because of its unique connection with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when utilised. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly evaluated with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the various parts of the chair have been named corresponding to the parts of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic role of the chair is to support the human body, its credit is evaluated generally by how fully it does fulfill this practical role. Within the manufacture of the chair, the maker is restricted for particular static laws and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that made distinctive chair types, as expressions of the foremost endeavour in the industries of skill and aesthetics. From those societies, particular 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 result of skilled scheme, are now found from tomb findings. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs crafted akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was obtained. There was in our view no particular variation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The real difference lied in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made as an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this form stayed around for much later times. But the stool also then took on the character of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be observed, 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 in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are made of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came up but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient fossil still extant but as seen from a wealth of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them would be shown. These curving legs were most likely to have been crafted from bent wood and were in that case had to bear a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were visibly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; evidence of statues of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and are a somewhat less delicately constructed klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were seen again during the Classicist era. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special brands of notable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as far as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of images and artworks has been kept, detailing the inside and outer parts of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing familiarity to styles of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was found both with and without arms although never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles could be slightly curved above the arms for the purpose of fit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). Together, all three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat later had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a limited extent stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the result) are a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs probably were only for elderly persons, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The structure and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is all at once 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 have been mortised on one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark 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 produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced 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. Although this style of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely 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 is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of rather thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour 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 popularised 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 brands 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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