Out of all furniture items, the chair may be the most imperative. While the majority of other objects (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair was viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds such as the bench or sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic creation; it can also be a symbol of social ranking. Within the historical royal courts there were important distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. In the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed an identifier of superior dignity, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be utilised for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms has perfected to fit to differing human uses. Because of its particular relationship with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when used. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood and clearly evaluated with a person using it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the different areas of the chair are labeled corresponding to the limbs of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary role of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is valued generally on how suitably it fulfills this practical role. In the manufacture of a chair, the builder is limited under particular static regulations and principal measurements. In these boundaries, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over a period of several thousand years. There existed peoples that held iconic chair types, as seen of the highest task in the industries of skill and design. Within those societies, a note should 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful make, were seen from tomb findings. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs formed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular structure was crafted. There seems to be no marked change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The simple difference existed in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was crafted for an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool this form continued during much later periods. But the stool also then played the role of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were worked from wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came up but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient fossil still in form but as in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs are displayed. These unique legs were most likely manufactured of bent wood and were in that case subjected to a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were plainly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; quite a few casts of seated Romans offer designs of a more heavyset and are a kind of less delicately constructed klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were brought back in the Classicist era. The klismos style is seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable originality in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and artworks has been preserved, with images of the insides and outside of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing likeness to representations of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be found both with and without arms but always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it has been found, the stiles had been delicately curved on top of the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). Each of the three limbs were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a restricted extent reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose as well) signify a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were only for senior people, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of 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, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously 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 row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 popular 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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