Of all furniture items, the chair could be the primary one. While the majority of other pieces (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to complex types for example a bench and sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic object; it can also be an indicator of social place. Within the Medieval royal courts there were important signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior standing, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As its furniture creation, the chair holds a number of different purposes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has adapted to fit to different human requirements. Because of its significant link with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when being used. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and tested by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the several areas of a chair have been named like the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary job of a chair is to support the human body, its value is judged firstly from how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of a chair, the maker is bound in certain static rules and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over a period of several thousand years. There were societies that had significant chair shapes, as expressive of the foremost craft in the arenas of craft and art. Within these such civilisations, particular 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert design, are today a finding from tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular form was created. There appeared to be no noteworthy difference from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The only difference lied in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was manufactured for an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the chair existed during much later periods of time. But the stool then also played the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can now be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are created of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came again somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this kind is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still around but as seen from a trove of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those were shown. These odd legs were considered to be executed with bent wood and were therefore had great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely strong and were clearly signified.
The Romans embued the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans display designs of a denser and apparently slightly less intricately designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were brought back within the Classicist era. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of considerable originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be charted as well as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of drawings and works of art was preserved, displaying the insides and outer parts of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting resemblance to representations of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be found both with or without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles could be slightly curved on top of the arms to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its back). The three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of a back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that just to a limited limit support corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) indicate a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved for senior people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during 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, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same era, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine 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 was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and grants 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and finer items would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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