Out of all furniture pieces, the chair may be primary. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes for example a bench or sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it can also be semiotic of social rank. Within the Medieval royal courts there were clear connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior dignity, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture form, the chair ranges from a range of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs 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. We can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms has evolved to fit to differing human desires. Because of its particular connection with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when used. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly judged with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several areas of a chair are named as the limbs of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious job of a chair is to support our body, its worth is evaluated principally for how fully it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the build of a chair, the carpenter is limited within particular static regulations and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair is a period of several thousand years. There were cultures that have created unique chair types, as expressive of the leading craft in the arenas of skill and art. Out of those societies, special mention 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled design, are now found from discoveries made in tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs designed as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was obtained. There was in our understanding no marked change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The general change was in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured to be an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool this stool existed for much later periods. But the stool then was created for the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared again some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this type 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 known not as any ancient item still existing but in a variety of pictorial items. The significant kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them can be seen. These strange legs were considered to be crafted of bent wood and were probably bore extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super solid and were visibly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; some models of seated Romans are examples of a more heavyset and which appear to be a somewhat crudely built klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were revived within the Classicist time. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and artworks has been protected, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and their furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting likeness to pictures of ancient chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two standard chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been found both with or without arms but always with the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles had been marginally curved over the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Together, the three limbs are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of a back splat later had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a restricted extent support corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the bargain) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs probably were kept for senior persons, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration parts are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more expensive items can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 well-known 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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