Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be the primary one. While most of the other forms (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be looked upon here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed chairs including the bench and sofa, which may be looked upon 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 exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic object; it is historically symbolic of social place. In the Medieval royal courts there were significant signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to utilise a stool. During the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior standing, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture creation, the chair ranges from a range of variations. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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 have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have changed to fit to growing human uses. From its unique importance with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when in use. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and evaluated by a person using it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the various limbs of the chair are given names like the names of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal work of the chair is to support the human body, its value is tested generally for how completely it fulfills this practical function. Within the manufacture of a chair, the builder is bound within some static legislation and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that had individual chair types, expressions of the leading object in the arenas of skill and creativity. In these such societies, particular note needs to 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 result of expert craft, are today known from tomb discoveries. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular structure was created. There was in our view no significant variation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The only change was in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted to be an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool this chair continued during much later points. But the stool then also was created for the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be seen, 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 are in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are created with wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came again somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient object still existing but from a large amount of pictorial material. The significant kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs can be displayed. These curving legs were presumably created out of bent wood and were thus had to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very solid and were particularly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; evidence of models of seated Romans offer designs of a denser and apparently somewhat less delicately crafted klismos. Both features, the light or the heavy, were popularised during the Classicist time. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of profound uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be followed as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of sketches and paintings was protected, displaying the interior and exterior of Chinese households and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing familiarity to representations of older 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 constructed both with and without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, though, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms so as to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its back). All three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of a back splat had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a limited ability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose additionally) indicate a design particular 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—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs most likely were reserved for the senior members of the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings display a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of rich 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 is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and delicate 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 was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally 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 disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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
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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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