From each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be primary. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed items for example a bench or sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it historically is symbolic of social place. From the historical royal courts there were significant signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. In the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior dignity, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture form, the chair ranges from a number of variations. 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). Since the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or 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.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has been evolved to match to differing human uses. From its close association with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when in employ. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really understood and clearly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the individual elements of the chair are given labels corresponding to the areas of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental job of your chair is to support the human body, its credit is valued principally by how fully it fulfills this practical job. Within the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is limited in some static law and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had distinctive chair forms, as expressions of the principal work in the areas of handling and design. Among these cultures, special 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled craft, were found from findings made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted like those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular structure was obtained. There was in our view no particular change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The general variation was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed for an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this stool existed until much later points. But the stool then also was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are formed with wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, can be seen but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient object still extant but as in a wealth of pictorial objects. The significant kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be shown. These unique legs were thought to have been manufactured from bent wood and were thus needed to bear huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very solid and were overtly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; quite a few models of seated Romans display designs of a more heavyset and apparently slightly less delicately designed klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist period. The klismos influence is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special forms of considerable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and works of art had been protected, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing likeness to designs of previous chairs.
Like in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms though never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms in order to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Each of the three areas are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a restricted extent support corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top that off) are a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were kept for senior individuals in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood 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 change in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Works of art display a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of quite thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer chairs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead 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 popular 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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