Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair could be paramount. While most of the other objects (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to complex makes such as 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 clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic artwork; it was also semiotic of social rank. From the historical royal courts there were social connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. During the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior standing, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture form, the chair encompasses a number of various models. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been adapted to conform to differing human needs. Because of its unique connection with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when in use. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and regarded best by a person using it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the individual limbs of the chair have been given labels likened to the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental function of a chair is to support a body, its credit is judged primarily on how completely it measures up to this practical function. Within the manufacture of a chair, the maker is restricted with certain static regulations and principal measurements. Under these limits, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There were civilizations that have created iconic chair types, as seen of the leading object in the spheres of handling and art. Within these such societies, 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of skilled craft, were found from discoveries made in tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs designed akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular construction was made. There appeared to be no noteworthy differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The only variation exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed as an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool this type stayed until much later times. But the stool then was created for the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical function 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 work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are worked from wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappears somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient fossil still extant but as found in a large amount of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them could be shown. These curved legs were likely to have been executed of bent wood and were as such put under huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super stable and were plainly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; quite a few casts of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and which appear to be a slightly less delicately constructed klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were popularised during the Classicist period. The klismos design is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special types of marked originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be traced as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and paintings has been kept safe, with images of the inside and exterior of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing similarity to representations of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with or without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles are slightly curved above the arms in order to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, all three sections are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the back splat then had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a limited extent stabilise corner joints (and are loose in the bargain) signify a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were kept for elderly 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 and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in 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 evidenced in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and fine 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 is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of fairly thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer items would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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
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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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