From each of the furniture items, the chair could be the most important. While the majority of other pieces (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex types including a 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 overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic piece of art; it can also be semiotic of social rank. At the past royal courts there were clear signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. From the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed an identifier of superior dignity, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a number of different models. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design 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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes has been changed to suit to growing human needs. For its significant relationship with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when utilised. Although it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly judged with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the different elements of a chair were named like the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious purpose of your chair is to support a human body, its credit is judged firstly from how fully it does fulfill this practical use. Within the manufacture of the chair, the builder is restricted in the static legislation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that made iconic chair forms, expressions of the foremost endeavour in the industries of skill and art. From these peoples, individual mention 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled design, were seen from findings made in tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs structured as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular construction was crafted. There was from our view no significant variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The only difference was in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed to be an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool the kind existed until much later periods. But the stool then was created as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were formed from wood. The plain build of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came up but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient fossil still in form but in a trove of pictorial objects. The significant kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs would be displayed. These curved legs were thought to have been created out of bent wood and were in that case had to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super strong and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek design; designs of statues of seated Romans offer examples of a heavier and in appearance kind of less delicately constructed klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were brought back in the Classicist era. The klismos style is seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some kinds of marked uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be traced as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of sketches and artworks has been kept, with images of the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting familiarity to images of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms however always having a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles had been delicately curved over the arms in order to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, all three areas were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of this back splat later had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a restricted ability reinforce corner joints (and are loose into the bargain) signify a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for senior persons, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style 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 might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious 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 forms—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover 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 of them have wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket examples would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 popular 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 versions 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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