Of all furniture items, the chair could be of most importance. While most other pieces (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds for example the bench and sofa, which may 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 curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic piece; it is historically symbolic of social place. At the historical royal courts there were social signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. From the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been iconic of superior rank, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher level.
In its furniture form, the chair ranges from a variety of various models. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms has evolved to conform to differing human needs. Due to its particular connection with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when utilised. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly evaluated with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the various elements of the chair have been given labels according to the elements of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original role of the chair is to support our body, its value is valued firstly for how fully it measures up to this practical role. Within the build of a chair, the designer is limited in particular static law and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair covered an epoch of several thousand years. There were civilizations that created unique chair shapes, expressions of the leading craft in the arenas of skill and aesthetics. Within such cultures, a note must 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 skilled make, are today a finding from tomb discoveries. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs crafted like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular form was made. There was in our understanding no particular differentiation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The main difference exists in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that chair persisted until much later points. But the stool then took on the role of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were created out of wood. The plain build of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came again at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of these is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient item still extant but as seen in a trove of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be seen. These odd legs were presumably manufactured in bent wood and were in that case bore huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super durable and were overtly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; quite a few statues of seated Romans display designs of a denser and apparently slightly less delicately built klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos style is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some brands of profound uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and paintings has been kept safe, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing likeness to pictures of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair is found both with or without arms although always having its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, though, the stiles are slightly curved on top of the arms so as to sit correctly with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). Together, the three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of a back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and were loose additionally) represent a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs probably were kept for older individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into 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 had its mark on the chair. Works of art show a style 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 bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is found in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms 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 methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of quite thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and finer examples can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 popular 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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