From all the furniture objects, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other forms (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be said here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds for example the bench or sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic piece; it can also be semiotic of social standing. At the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been an identifier of superior rank, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture creation, the chair can be utilised for a variety of variations. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have been adapted to suit to differing human uses. From its particular connection with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when in use. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly tested with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the individual parts of a chair were labeled according to the names of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first purpose of the chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated generally for how fully it fulfills this practical role. In the creation of the chair, the chair maker is restricted for some static legislation and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that have created significant chair types, seen of the leading work in the spheres of handling and art. From those peoples, a mention can 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of careful craft, are known from tomb findings. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular construction was created. There was from our knowledge no notable differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The general difference exists in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted for an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the form stayed during much later periods. But the stool then also was made for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were made out of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, also appeared somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient fossil still in form but from a trove of pictorial objects. The significant kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were shown. These strange legs were considered to have been created out of bent wood and were therefore put under great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super durable and were plainly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; some casts of seated Romans show examples of a heavier and are a slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist era. The klismos influence is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special forms of considerable originality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and works of art has been kept safe, detailing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing likeness to representations of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be found both with and without arms although always having a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, it has been found, the stiles were marginally curved over the arms so as to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Together, the three areas had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of this back splat then had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a particular extent support corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) indicate a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were kept for senior members of the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration aspects are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not seem to have been adjoined by either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks show a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and 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 preference, it is not believed that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form 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 style—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and permits 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of rather thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive items would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite in large 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
During 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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