Out of each of the furniture forms, the chair may be the imperative one. While most of the other items (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds 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 overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it was also symbolic of social ranking. Within the old royal courts there were important signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior position, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As its furniture creation, the chair encompasses a range of different models. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes have perfected to suit to growing human needs. For its close importance with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when in use. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly tested by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the individual areas of a chair were given names like the limbs of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is evaluated principally for how well it fulfills this practical function. In the manufacture of a chair, the designer is limited by the static laws and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There are peoples that have created significant chair types, as expressive of the principal craft in the areas of handling and aesthetics. Among those peoples, individual mention 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 construct of careful design, are now found from tomb discoveries. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed like those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular design was made. There seems to be no significant change in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The simple difference was in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed as an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this stool persisted for much later periods of time. But the stool then also took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were worked out of wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient fossil still in form but found in a large amount of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs were visible. These curving legs were most likely to be manufactured in bent wood and were in that case needed to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very durable and were visibly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans are chairs of a denser and are a rather crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were brought back within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some kinds of notable iconicism around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as long as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of images and paintings has been kept safe, displaying the interiors and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing similarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair is seen both with or without arms though always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one style, however, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms in order to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its back). All three sections are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat later had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a limited capability reinforce corner joints (and then are loose as a result) represent an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs probably were kept for older family members, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer items can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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 popularised 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 brands 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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