From each of the furniture items, the chair could be of most importance. While most other pieces (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including a bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it was historically semiotic of social place. Within the Medieval royal courts there were clear distinctions between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. During the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been an indicator of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As its furniture form, the chair holds a range of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has designated new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has changed to suit to growing human desires. Due to its particular connection with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when utilised. While 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 really understood and judged by a person using it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various limbs of a chair are given names corresponding to the parts of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first job of a chair is to support our body, its credit is tested principally by how well it does fulfill this practical function. In the structure of the chair, the maker is restricted under some static legislation and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There were peoples that held individual chair types, as seen of the leading object in the arenas of craft and design. Out of these such peoples, a 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of expert craft, are found from tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular design was created. There appeared to be no marked change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The real change lied in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool that stool stayed around until much later periods. But the stool also then took on the character of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, 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 made in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were created with wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came up but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still around but from a wealth of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which could be displayed. These strange legs were most likely to be created of bent wood and were probably needed to bear huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely strong and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; a number of models of seated Romans offer evidence of a more heavyset and which appear to be a slightly less intricately designed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were popularised in the Classicist time. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of marked iconicism within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and paintings has been preserved, detailing the insides and exteriors of Chinese households and their furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting resemblance to images of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is seen both with and without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles could be slightly curved above the arms in order to suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). Together, all three areas were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose as a result) signify an element solely 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—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. 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 over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were reserved for elderly persons, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decorative elements are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and locked into 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. Artworks show a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with 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 at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be 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 produced in vast quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely 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 form—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and finer chairs would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference 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 popular 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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