From all the furniture pieces, the chair may be the imperative one. While most other objects (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be said here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to developed makes for example the bench and sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it was historically a symbol of social status. At the old royal courts there were plain signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to utilise a stool. Since the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior standing, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised platform.
In a furniture construction, the chair can be employed for a range of various forms. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes has been changed to match to growing human needs. For its close association with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in employ. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly tested by a person using it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the various limbs of a chair were given names according to the limbs of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary function of a chair is to support our body, its value is evaluated firstly from how suitably it fulfills this practical role. Within the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is restricted by certain static rules and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There existed peoples that had significant chair shapes, as seen of the premier object in the areas of handling and aesthetics. From those peoples, a mention must 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 objects of careful scheme, were a finding from findings made in tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular form was created. There was from our knowledge no notable change from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The only difference lies in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured as an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the type stayed until much later periods. But the stool then also existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are formed from wood. The plain build of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, appeared but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient item still existing but in a large amount of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which would be visible. These curved legs were likely to be created with bent wood and were probably needed to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely stable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; quite a few casts of seated Romans offer evidence of a more heavyset and in appearance rather crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light or the heavy, were popularised within the Classicist time. The klismos style is used in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some kinds of marked iconicism of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as well as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and works of art has been protected, detailing the interior and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing likeness to styles of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms though never without a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). All three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of the back splat had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would only to a restricted capability support corner joints (and were loose to top that off) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs probably were kept only for older individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same period, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be seen in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by 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 style—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat suits 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 are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of rather thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket chairs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over 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 commonly 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 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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