Out of all furniture forms, the chair could be primary. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs for example the bench and sofa, which might be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it is historically a symbol of social status. From the historical royal courts there were plain distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior position, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture construction, the chair can be employed for a number of different forms. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes have been perfected to conform to growing human requirements. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when in use. Though it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the individual parts of the chair are labeled according to the elements of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is tested basically from how suitably it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of a chair, the builder is bound for some static regulations and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair extended over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that have created significant chair types, expressions of the foremost work in the industries of technique and aesthetics. Out of those cultures, particular 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled make, are found from tomb findings. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs structured like those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular design was made. There was in our understanding no marked difference from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The general variation lied in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was designed to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this form stayed for much later times. But the stool then was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed with wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, appeared again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient item still existing but as seen in a variety of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those were visible. These curving legs were presumably executed in bent wood and were therefore bore huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super stable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; quite a few statues of seated Romans display evidence of a thicker and are a somewhat less delicately designed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were brought back in the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special kinds of considerable originality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be followed as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of drawings and paintings was preserved, with images of the inside and exterior of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing resemblance to designs of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair is constructed both with or without arms though never without its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles could be lightly curved above the arms in order to fit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). The three sections were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the style of the back splat had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a limited extent embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) are a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs presumably were kept only for senior people in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting 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 achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive chairs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. 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 in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 commonly 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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