Out of all furniture forms, the chair might be the imperative one. While the majority of other items (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed items such as a bench and sofa, which might be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic artwork; it was historically a signifier of social ranking. From the old royal courts there were important differences between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. From the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior status, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture creation, the chair holds a wealth of variations. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has perfected to conform to different human uses. Because of its unique importance with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when in use. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly evaluated by a person using it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the various parts of the chair have been named according to the names of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious work of a chair is to support your body, its value is judged firstly for how suitably it measures up to this practical function. Within the structure of the chair, the chair maker is restricted with particular static regulation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair covers dates of several thousand years. There were civilizations that created distinctive chair forms, as seen of the principal object in the arenas of technique and creativity. Among these 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of expert design, are today found from tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs formed as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was created. There was from our knowledge no significant differentiation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The simple difference existed in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was made for an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool the kind persisted til much later times. But the stool then also was designed for the character of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, 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 construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are formed out of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, came up somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient object still extant but seen in a trove of pictorial material. The significant kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those would be visible. These curving legs were understood to be created with bent wood and were thus had to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very stable and were visibly signified.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; designs of casts of seated Romans are chairs of a denser and are a kind of more crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were popularised in the Classicist period. The klismos style is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special kinds of considerable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and works of art had been preserved, showing the insides and outer parts of Chinese households and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing likeness to pictures of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was constructed both with or without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one image, however, the stiles could be slightly curved on top of the arms to suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Together, all three areas had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of the Chinese back splat had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would only to a restricted extent reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose into the bargain) are a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were reserved for senior members of the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been held together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art project a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually 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 solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of quite thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and finer designs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
During 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 styles 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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