From all the furniture items, the chair could be of most importance. While most of the other objects (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is used here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds like a bench or sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic craft; it historically is a signifier of social place. From the old royal courts there were clear distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior rank, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In a furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a number of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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 can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms have been evolved to suit to different human requirements. Due to its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when used. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly regarded by a person using it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the various limbs of the chair are given names like the limbs of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary role of a chair is to support your body, its value is tested firstly on how well it measures up to this practical use. In the manufacture of a chair, the builder is restricted for certain static regulations and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covered a period of several thousand years. There existed cultures that created iconic chair shapes, expressions of the principal object in the industries of craft and design. Among these cultures, a 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 items of expert scheme, are now seen from findings made in tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs structured not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was created. There was to our understanding no particular difference from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The main change lies in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured for an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool the stool existed until much later points in time. But the stool also played the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from 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 made in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were created from wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappears but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient fossil still extant but in a variety of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be displayed. These curving legs were presumed to have been created out of bent wood and were therefore needed to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very solid and were overtly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; designs of casts of seated Romans are evidence of a thicker and which appear to be a slightly less intricately designed klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were seen again within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some brands of notable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be traced as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of images and paintings had been kept safe, showing the interior and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing similarity to pictures of previous chairs.
Like in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with and without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles had been delicately curved above the arms so as to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). Together, all three areas were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of a back splat then had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a particular extent support corner joints (and are loose into the bargain) indicate a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved for elderly persons in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decoration aspects are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type 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. Although this style of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and fine 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 developed 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 leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of rather thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer designs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference in many 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 popularised 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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