Out of all furniture needs, the chair may be of most importance. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be used here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex items for example a bench or sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it was also a symbol of social standing. From the Medieval royal courts there were significant distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. During the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior status, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a number of various purposes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has been adapted to fit to evolving human requirements. For its close relationship with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when being used. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the individual elements of a chair are given labels according to the elements of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original work of the chair is to support a human body, its value is tested primarily by how completely it measures up to this practical job. In the creation of the chair, the carpenter is restricted within the static rules and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There are cultures that created individual chair types, as expressive of the foremost task in the areas of craft and aesthetics. Among these societies, 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful make, are now found from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs structured like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular construction was made. There appeared to be no significant difference in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The simple change existed in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was developed for an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool this type continued until much later periods. But the stool then also was created for the role of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were formed with wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still around but as seen in a wealth of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those are visible. These curving legs were likely to be executed in bent wood and were in that case subjected to a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were clearly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; a number of statues of seated Romans display evidence of a heavier and apparently rather crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light or the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist era. The klismos style is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special kinds of profound individuality within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be tracked as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of sketches and artworks has been kept safe, detailing the inside and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing familiarity to designs of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been designed both with and without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, however, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its chairback). Together, all three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a limited ability reinforce corner joints (and then were loose as well) represent a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were only for senior people in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The structure and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings project 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 bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive 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 was, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of relatively thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popularised 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
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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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