From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be primary. While many other forms (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to further pieces like the bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.
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 an aesthetic creation; it historically is symbolic of social hierarchy. At the old royal courts there were clear distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. During the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior rank, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture creation, the chair is employed for a number of various purposes. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from 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 can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes has been perfected to conform to differing human uses. Because of its close link with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when in employ. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and tested with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the different areas of the chair are given labels as the names of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary job of a chair is to support the body, its value is valued generally on how well it does fulfill this practical role. Within the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is bound within some static rules and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There are civilizations that have created iconic chair types, seen of the premier craft in the areas of handling and creativity. In those civilisations, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful make, are now seen from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular construction was crafted. There was from our view no particular difference from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The general variation lied in the complexity of ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was made for an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool this stool existed until much later periods of time. But the stool also then was designed for the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical job 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 work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were created from wood. The plain build of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, appeared but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient fossil still around but as found in a trove of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them could be seen. These creative legs were understood to be crafted of bent wood and were as such had extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely stable and were visibly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; designs of casts of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and are a somewhat less delicately constructed klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special kinds of notable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and works of art had been preserved, detailing the interiors and exterior of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing similarity to pictures of previous chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair was found both with or without arms though always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, it has been seen, the stiles are slightly curved on top of the arms so as to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). The three limbs had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the Chinese back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a limited capability embolden corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top it off) represent a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were only for elderly people in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be displayed in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of quite thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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
During 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 products 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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