Out of all furniture pieces, the chair might be the paramount one. While most other forms (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be said here in the common sense, from stool to throne to developed types such as a bench and sofa, which should be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic item; it was historically an indicator of social placement. At the old royal courts there were social distinctions between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior position, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As its furniture form, the chair is used for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes have evolved to conform to growing human desires. Because of its significant association with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when used. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are items inside or not, a chair is really understood and clearly evaluated by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several elements of a chair have been given names like the elements of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary role of a chair is to support a human body, its value is tested generally by how well it does measure up to this practical function. In the build of a chair, the maker is limited in particular static rules and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that made individual chair shapes, as seen of the leading craft in the industries of skill and art. Within those cultures, special 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 objects of masterful make, are now known from findings made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular construction was made. There was from our understanding no significant differentiation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The main variation was in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured to be an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool the chair persevered til much later days. But the stool then was designed as the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be noted, 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 in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are formed of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came up but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient item still existing but as found in a trove of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which would be visible. These odd legs were possibly crafted of bent wood and were in that case had to bear huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely solid and were particularly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; quite a few casts of seated Romans are examples of a denser and apparently kind of less intricately designed klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were brought back within the Classicist time. The klismos influence is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special brands of profound originality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be followed as well as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of images and artworks had been kept, with images of the insides and exterior of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting familiarity to styles of older chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be seen both with or without arms but always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles had been delicately curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). The three areas were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that merely to a restricted ability stabilise corner joints (and are loose additionally) represent a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs most likely were only for elderly persons, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decorative elements are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not seem to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself with its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of rather thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the 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 manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour 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 popularised 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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