Out of each of the furniture forms, the chair could be of the most importance. While many other pieces (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs for example a bench or sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it was also symbolic of social status. At the past royal courts there were social signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to use a stool. During the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior position, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
In a furniture creation, the chair encompasses a wealth of variations. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have adapted to fit to different human requirements. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when in employ. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and regarded best by a person using it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the different areas of the chair have been labeled as the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental role of your chair is to support a body, its credit is evaluated basically from how fully it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the structure of the chair, the builder is limited under some static regulations and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There were societies that had made iconic chair types, seen of the foremost endeavour in the industries of handling and art. Out of those civilisations, a mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of masterful design, are seen from findings made in tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was crafted. There was in our knowledge no notable differentiation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The general variation was in the brand of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured for an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool this stool existed during much later points. But the stool also then was made for the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are worked with wood. The plain make of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappears somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient object still around but from a trove of pictorial evidence. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be visible. These unusual legs were understood to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were in that case bore extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super solid and were clearly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; existing models of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and in appearance somewhat more crudely crafted klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were brought back within the Classicist time. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of marked uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as far as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of sketches and paintings has been protected, displaying the interior and exteriors of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing resemblance to representations of previous chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was seen both with and without arms though always having a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles had been lightly curved above the arms so as to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). Together, all three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of this back splat then had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a particular ability stabilise corner joints (and then were loose in the bargain) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs most likely were allowed only for the senior individuals, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and aesthetic parts are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and held 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 name on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is displayed in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of relatively thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and finer designs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and found 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 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 products 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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