Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair might be paramount. While most of the other items (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be looked upon here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms like a bench and sofa, which may be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic item; it was historically semiotic of social rank. From the old royal courts there were important differences between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to cope with a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior status, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In a furniture creation, the chair can be utilised for a variety of various models. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have been evolved to match to different human requirements. Due to its close connection with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when used. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and evaluated by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the different areas of the chair were named corresponding to the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first role of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is judged basically from how completely it measures up to this practical use. In the manufacture of the chair, the builder is limited within certain static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair covers an epoch of several thousand years. There were societies that had made distinctive chair types, expressive of the topmost craft in the arenas of handling and creativity. From those civilisations, particular 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 upshot of masterful design, were a finding from tomb findings. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs formed akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular design was obtained. There appeared to be no notable difference between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The real variation lied in the kind of ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed for an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool that stool existed til much later points in time. But the stool also was designed as the role of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are worked with wood. The simple make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was then seen but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still around but as seen from a trove of pictorial items. The iconic kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs would be visible. These creative legs were understood to be crafted in bent wood and were likely to have been bore huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely strong and were plainly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; quite a few casts of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and in appearance rather more crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist era. The klismos style can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some kinds of notable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be followed as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of sketches and paintings was kept safe, displaying the interiors and exteriors of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing similarity to styles of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, two chair designs dominated in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was found both with and without arms but always with the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, however, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms so as to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). All three areas were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a restricted extent support corner joints (as well as being loose in the bargain) signify a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were reserved for senior persons in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been held together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised on 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 left its mark on the chair. Paintings display a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and delicate 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, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of relatively thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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