Of all furniture pieces, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other forms (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces such as a bench or sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously 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 artwork; it historically was semiotic of social ranking. At the Medieval royal courts there were social differences between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior status, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher level.
In its furniture form, the chair holds a range of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds have been evolved to match to growing human desires. Due to its particular association with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when in use. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly regarded with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the different parts of the chair are given names corresponding to the parts of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear purpose of the chair is to support a body, its credit is judged basically from how fully it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the build of the chair, the chair maker is bound within particular static rules and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that made significant chair types, expressions of the highest endeavour in the arenas of technique and aesthetics. Within these cultures, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful scheme, are found from tomb findings. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular form was made. There seemed to be no notable variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The general change existed in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was manufactured as an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool the type persisted during much later days. But the stool then was designed for the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were created with wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this kind is the folding stool, made out of 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 item still extant but as seen from a trove of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are seen. These curved legs were presumed to have been created of bent wood and were likely to have been bore extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely solid and were clearly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; a number of models of seated Romans offer evidence of a denser and in appearance somewhat less delicately designed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were brought back within the Classicist time. The klismos influence is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be followed as far as in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of drawings and artworks had been kept safe, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese houses and the furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing similarity to pictures of previous chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was seen both with or without arms although never missing its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles had been slightly curved over the arms so as to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Each of the three areas were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of this back splat then had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only just to a particular ability support corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs presumably were only for the senior individuals, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both furniture items is stylized. The construction and decorative parts are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been put together by either glue or screws, but were 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 mark on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of fairly thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 reknowned 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 versions 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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