From all the furniture pieces, the chair might be paramount. While many other items (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be looked upon here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds like the bench or 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 distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic piece of art; it historically was symbolic of social ranking. In the historical royal courts there were clear connotations between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. From the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior position, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture form, the chair can be used for a range of different purposes. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been changed to suit to different human needs. For its unique link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when used. Although it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is seen best and tested by a person using it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the several elements of a chair have been labeled as the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental role of the chair is to support the body, its value is evaluated basically by how well it does fulfill this practical role. Within the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is bound by certain static regulations and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There are peoples that made iconic chair forms, seen of the highest object in the spheres of handling and art. Among those peoples, particular note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of careful design, are a finding from tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was crafted. There seemed to be no significant variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The main difference existed in the kind of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed to be an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this stool persisted during much later periods of time. But the stool then also was designed for the role of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were created with wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen again at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of those is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient specimen still existing but as found in a large amount of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are displayed. These curving legs were considered to be manufactured from bent wood and were probably subjected to extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very strong and were plainly signified.
The Romans embued the Greek style; designs of casts of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a kind of crudely built klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular forms of considerable iconicism around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be charted as well as that of Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and paintings had been kept safe, with images of the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing familiarity to representations of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was designed both with and without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles were lightly curved on top of the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Each of the three sections were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a particular limit support corner joints (and were loose as a result) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were reserved for older persons, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is 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. Although this kind of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of quite thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more expensive examples might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite 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 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 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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