Of all furniture objects, the chair might be the most important. While most of the other pieces (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds like the bench or sofa, which should be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic object; it is also semiotic of social standing. In the Medieval royal courts there were important signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture construction, the chair can be employed for a number of different models. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types has been perfected to suit to differing human requirements. Because of its particular connection with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when in use. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly judged by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the individual areas of the chair have been labeled according to the parts of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary purpose of your chair is to support a body, its credit is evaluated primarily on how fully it fulfills this practical role. In the construction of the chair, the maker is bound under the static laws and principal measurements. Inside these boundaries, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had individual chair forms, as seen of the foremost object in the spheres of technique and art. From these such peoples, particular mention must 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 upshot of careful scheme, are a finding from tomb findings. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs formed similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular construction was obtained. There appears to be no particular difference from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The simple change lies in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made to be an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that type persevered during much later periods of time. But the stool also then was made as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappeared some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient object still in form but in a variety of pictorial evidence. The better recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be visible. These unusual legs were presumed to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were in that case had to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very strong and were particularly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; designs of casts of seated Romans offer examples of a denser and which appear to be a rather more crudely constructed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist time. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some types of profound uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be tracked as well as in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of sketches and paintings had been protected, detailing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing resemblance to representations of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair is found both with and without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, however, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms so as to conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Together, the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the back splat later had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would only to a particular extent embolden corner joints (and then are loose in the result) signify a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were reserved only for elderly people in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not seem to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into 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 signature on the chair. Paintings show a kind of chair with a relatively brusque 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 small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced 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. Though this kind of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine 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, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more expensive items might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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