From all the furniture items, the chair could be of the most importance. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to developed pieces like a bench or sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
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 piece; it historically was an indicator of social place. At the past royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. From the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior dignity, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In a furniture purpose, the chair is used for a range of different makes. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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 can make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types have adapted to conform to changing human needs. For its significant association with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when being utilised. Whereas it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood and regarded best with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the various parts of the chair were given names likened to the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original work of the chair is to support our body, its value is judged primarily on how fully it measures up to this practical use. In the structure of a chair, the maker is bound with the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had significant chair types, as expressive of the highest craft in the arenas of skill and creativity. In those cultures, special note 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled make, are now found from tomb discoveries. The first one 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 similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular form was crafted. There was in our understanding no particular differentiation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The main variation lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was designed for an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the form existed for much later points in time. But the stool then existed in the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were made with wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, was seen again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient specimen still around but as seen from a wealth of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs were displayed. These curving legs were probably executed out of bent wood and were likely to have been needed to bear a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very stable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; existing models of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of more crudely designed klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were brought back during the Classicist time. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some forms of considerable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be charted as long as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of drawings and artworks has been kept, displaying the interior and exterior of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing likeness to pictures of older chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair is seen both with and without arms but always with its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, however, the stiles could be slightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). The three limbs had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of a back splat had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a limited extent reinforce corner joints (and then are loose into the bargain) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs most likely were reserved only for the senior persons, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings show a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the form actually was born 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 clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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 style—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. 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 small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of quite thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer designs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is 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 design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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 popular 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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