Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair might be the primary one. While most of the other pieces (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair was viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds 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 overtly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic creation; it is also symbolic of social hierarchy. At the past royal courts there were plain connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. In the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior status, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture creation, the chair is used for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have changed to suit to growing human uses. Due to its unique link with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when in use. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and clearly evaluated with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the several parts of a chair have been given labels like the elements of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of your chair is to support our human body, its value is tested firstly on how fully it measures up to this practical function. Within the creation of a chair, the designer is bound under some static rules and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had made unique chair shapes, seen of the highest craft in the spheres of skill and creativity. From such civilisations, a note can 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 result of masterful design, are today found from discoveries made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs structured like those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular form was obtained. There appeared to be no noteworthy differentiation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The real change lies in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this form persevered until much later times. But the stool also then existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical task 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 decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were created out of wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then appeared at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient item still existing but seen in a large amount of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be seen. These curving legs were presumably created of bent wood and were thus had to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very strong and were visibly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; some statues of seated Romans are examples of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of less intricately constructed klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were seen again during the Classicist time. The klismos style is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some kinds of profound originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be traced as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and works of art had been preserved, detailing the inside and outer parts of Chinese homes and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing resemblance to images of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be designed both with and without arms but always with the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, however, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). The three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of the back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a limited capability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top that off) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were kept only for the senior individuals, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art display a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is found in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and fine 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 is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made 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 thereof are made from wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer designs would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic 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 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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