From all the furniture items, the chair might be of the most importance. While most other forms (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair was regarded here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed makes like the bench and sofa, which may be seen 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 stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic craft; it is also symbolic of social hierarchy. In the past royal courts there were important distinctions between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to use a stool. Since the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
As its furniture form, the chair is employed for a wealth of different purposes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have perfected to match to evolving human uses. From its significant association with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when utilised. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different elements of the chair are labeled according to the limbs of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary purpose of your chair is to support the human body, its credit is judged firstly for how suitably it fulfills this practical function. Within the construction of the chair, the builder is limited for the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that created distinctive chair shapes, as seen of the principal task in the spheres of handling and art. Out of such societies, particular mention can 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 result of skilled craft, are known from tomb discoveries. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs designed akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular structure was crafted. There was from our understanding no notable variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The main difference existed in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created as an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool that stool stayed around for much later periods. But the stool then was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were created out of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came up but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient specimen still existing but as found in a trove of pictorial items. The most recognisable 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 can be seen. These unusual legs were thought to be crafted of bent wood and were thus subjected to great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely solid and were particularly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; existing casts of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and are a slightly crudely built klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were popularised during the Classicist era. The klismos influence is used in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular forms of notable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and paintings was preserved, with images of the insides and exteriors of Chinese homes and the furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing resemblance to pictures of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms however never without the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles are slightly curved on top of the arms to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, the three sections are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the style of this back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a particular ability support corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) indicate a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were kept for the senior people, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic elements are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not look to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and locked into 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. Artworks project a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be found in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and finer items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popularised 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 commonly 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 brands 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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