Out of each of the furniture forms, the chair could be the most important. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be said here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to further makes including 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 distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic artwork; it was also an indicator of social rank. Within the old royal courts there were significant signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to squat on a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior position, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In its furniture construction, the chair holds a variety of variations. There are chairs manufactured to fit 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 olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds have been evolved to conform to different human desires. Due to its close importance with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when in use. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and tested by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the various limbs of the chair are given labels as the names of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of the chair is to support a body, its worth is tested firstly by how suitably it does measure up to this practical job. In the structure of a chair, the designer is limited under the static regulation and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair covers dates of several thousand years. There are societies that had iconic chair types, as expressions of the foremost craft in the spheres of technique and creativity. Within such cultures, a 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 structures of masterful scheme, are a finding from tomb findings. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs formed not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was obtained. There was from our understanding no significant difference from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The main change exists in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted for an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool that form continued for much later periods. But the stool then was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are created from 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 set between them, was seen again but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient specimen still around but from a trove of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them would be displayed. These unusual legs were considered to be manufactured of bent wood and were thus needed to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super durable and were visibly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; some statues of seated Romans show evidence of a thicker and in appearance slightly crudely built klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of sketches and artworks had been kept, showing the insides and outside of Chinese households and the furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting likeness to styles of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be designed both with or without arms though never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms for the purpose of sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Together, all three limbs were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of a back splat had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top that off) indicate a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs most likely were kept for senior people, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art display a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its elegant 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 form—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of relatively thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer designs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead 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 reknowned 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 styles 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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