From each of the furniture forms, the chair may be the paramount one. While the majority of other forms (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds like a bench or sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it historically was a symbol of social standing. At the Medieval royal courts there were plain connotations between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior rank, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
In its furniture form, the chair is utilised for a variety of different forms. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types have perfected to fit to different human needs. From its unique connection with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when used. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and clearly evaluated by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the several parts of the chair have been given names corresponding to the elements of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of a chair is to support the body, its credit is tested firstly from how suitably it measures up to this practical function. In the structure of the chair, the designer is restricted with the static legislation and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that have created iconic chair forms, expressive of the premier craft in the industries of craft and creativity. Out of such civilisations, particular note should 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of masterful craft, are now known from findings made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs designed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular design was obtained. There appears to be no noteworthy variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The only change lies in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the form persisted until much later periods of time. But the stool then also played the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, 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 are in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were made of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, was seen again at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient object still in form but as seen from a large amount of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs are visible. These strange legs were considered to have been crafted of bent wood and were probably put under extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super durable and were visibly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; some statues of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and apparently rather crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were brought back during the Classicist era. The klismos style is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular forms of marked iconicism around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and works of art had been preserved, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese homes and the furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing likeness to representations of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with and without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms so as to sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Each of the three parts were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of a back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that just to a particular capability embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose as a result) represent a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were kept only for older persons, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate 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 is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of quite thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive items would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and won favour in several 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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