Out of each of the furniture items, the chair could be of most importance. While many other forms (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is used here in the common sense, from stool to throne to developed makes including the bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and aesthetic creation; it is historically semiotic of social place. From the historical royal courts there were plain signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior standing, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture creation, the chair holds a range of variations. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has derived unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes have evolved to match to different human requirements. Because of its particular importance with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when in use. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be items inside or not, a chair is best seen and regarded best by a person using it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the individual parts of a chair are labeled corresponding to the names of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple function of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated basically for how well it does fulfill this practical job. In the manufacture of the chair, the chair maker is limited under some static regulations and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extended over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that made iconic chair shapes, seen of the premier object in the arenas of handling and design. Out of such peoples, individual note needs to 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 upshot of expert design, are today seen from tomb findings. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular construction was made. There was from our understanding no significant variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The only change lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was developed to be an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool the type persisted for much later periods. But the stool also then was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are made with wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, also appeared but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still in form but as in a trove of pictorial items. The significant kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those would be seen. These curved legs were likely to have been executed of bent wood and were probably needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely stable and were overtly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; existing casts of seated Romans show evidence of a thicker and in appearance somewhat less delicately crafted klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were brought back within the Classicist era. The klismos influence can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of marked individuality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and paintings had been preserved, with images of the insides and outer parts of Chinese houses and their furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing likeness to designs of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been designed both with or without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, however, the stiles could be lightly curved on top of the arms to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Each of the three sections are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat then had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a particular ability stabilise corner joints (and then are loose to top that off) represent a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs most likely were reserved for senior people in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not seem to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be seen 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. Although this style of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely 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 of styles—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat adheres 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 tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and finer designs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 reknowned 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 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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