Out of all furniture pieces, the chair could be the most important. While most other objects (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be looked upon here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds like a bench or sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic artwork; it historically was semiotic of social standing. In the Medieval royal courts there were clear differences between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. During the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior dignity, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher level.
As its furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a wealth of different forms. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has designated special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes have changed to suit to growing human requirements. From its significant association with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when used. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly tested by a person using it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the individual areas of a chair are given names according to the parts of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple role of a chair is to support our body, its worth is evaluated principally for how completely it does measure up to this practical role. In the design of a chair, the chair maker is bound under certain static law and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair extended over a period of several thousand years. There were societies that created distinctive chair shapes, expressions of the topmost object in the areas of skill and art. From those peoples, special mention 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of masterful scheme, are today seen from tomb discoveries. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs structured as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular design was created. There was from our view no noteworthy change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The general difference lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created for an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool the type continued til much later days. But the stool also then existed in the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are worked out of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came again but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient item still existing but in a wealth of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those were visible. These strange legs were presumably executed of bent wood and were therefore put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super stable and were visibly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; existing models of seated Romans are chairs of a heavier and in appearance rather crudely crafted klismos. Both types, the light or the heavy, were seen again during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular types of considerable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as far as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of sketches and artworks had been protected, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting familiarity to designs of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been seen both with and without arms but never without its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it has been found, the stiles could be lightly curved on top of the arms so as to sit correctly with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). All three sections had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a limited limit reinforce corner joints (and were loose to top that off) signify a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were reserved for the senior members of the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Paintings project a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of 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 small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant 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 style—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of rather thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite 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 versions 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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