From all the furniture items, the chair might be the most important. While many other items (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to developed makes for example a bench and sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic artwork; it historically was semiotic of social status. Within the old royal courts there were important distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to cope with a stool. Since the 20th century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior dignity, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In its furniture creation, the chair can be employed for a variety of various forms. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has developed particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms has changed to conform to different human desires. From its unique association with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when being used. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the individual limbs of a chair have been named according to the parts of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary purpose of a chair is to support the human body, its value is valued primarily by how completely it measures up to this practical job. In the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is bound within the static rules and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that held distinctive chair forms, as seen of the principal work in the industries of craft and creativity. From these such civilisations, special note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled make, were known from findings made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs shaped akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular design was made. There was from our knowledge no noteworthy difference from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The general variation was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created for an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that form stayed around until much later points in time. But the stool also was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are created of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappears some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient object still extant but from a variety of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those could be displayed. These creative legs were thought to have been executed in bent wood and were in that case put under great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very stable and were overtly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; a number of casts of seated Romans offer evidence of a more heavyset and are a kind of less intricately built klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were popularised in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special brands of notable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be tracked as far as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of sketches and paintings has been kept safe, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing resemblance to styles of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair is seen both with or without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles had been delicately curved on top of the arms in order to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). All three areas were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat exercised an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a restricted capability support corner joints (as well as being loose to top that off) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs probably were kept only for the senior members of the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting 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 constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive items would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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
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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