From all the furniture objects, the chair may be paramount. While many other items (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be used here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms such as the bench and sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic piece; it is also an indicator of social status. Within the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to sit on a stool. From the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised platform.
In its furniture construction, the chair is used for a wealth of different makes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or 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 contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds have been perfected to match to differing human desires. From its particular association with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when in use. Whereas 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 tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several parts of a chair have been labeled likened to the names of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original job of your chair is to support a human body, its value is judged generally by how completely it does fulfill this practical function. Within the structure of a chair, the carpenter is bound by some static law and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed societies that have created individual chair forms, as expressive of the leading object in the areas of handling and aesthetics. Out of those 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of careful scheme, are today known from tomb discoveries. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular form was created. There appears to be no particular difference in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The only variation was in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the evidence of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was made for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that kind stayed around until much later points in time. But the stool also then was made as the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were created from wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was seen again at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient fossil still existing but found in a trove of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are shown. These unusual legs were likely to be manufactured from bent wood and were likely to have been 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 had to be therefore super solid and were plainly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; some statues of seated Romans offer examples of a heavier and in appearance rather crudely built klismos. Both features, the light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special types of profound iconicism in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be followed as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of sketches and works of art has been protected, displaying the inside and outside of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing likeness to designs of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with or without arms however never missing a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one image, though, the stiles had been delicately curved by the arms to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). The three sections had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that merely to a limited extent stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top that off) indicate an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs presumably were only for older people in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration aspects are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been held together with either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, had the status 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 affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive 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 to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite in several 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 commonly known 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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