Of all furniture items, the chair may be paramount. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative types including a bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic artwork; it historically was a signifier of social ranking. From the Medieval royal courts there were plain connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to use a stool. In the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture construction, the chair is used for a number of different makes. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has been perfected to conform to evolving human desires. Due to its particular importance with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in employ. Although it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly evaluated by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several limbs of a chair have been labeled like the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary purpose of the chair is to support your body, its worth is tested primarily on how completely it does measure up to this practical function. Within the structure of the chair, the maker is limited for certain static laws and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had made iconic chair types, expressions of the principal task in the spheres of skill and design. From these cultures, special note must 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 upshot of skilled design, are now known from tomb findings. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed like those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular structure was obtained. There was in our view no particular difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The simple difference existed in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured to be an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool this chair persisted until much later periods of time. But the stool also was created as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be found, 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 are in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were made of wood. The plain make of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came up but somewhat later during 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, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient fossil still around but as seen in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The better recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were seen. These curved legs were considered to have been created of bent wood and were in that case had to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely strong and were particularly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; existing casts of seated Romans are chairs of a denser and which appear to be a slightly less intricately constructed klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were brought back within the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some brands of considerable individuality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot 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 serial of images and paintings was kept safe, displaying the interior and exteriors of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing similarity to designs of previous chairs.
Like in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair can be constructed both with and without arms but never without its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, however, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms in order to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, all three parts are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the back splat had an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a particular capability stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) are a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs probably were allowed only for the senior people in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration parts are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been adjoined by either glue or screws, but have been mortised on 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 put its signature on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious 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 style—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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 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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