Of all furniture items, the chair could be the primary one. While most other pieces (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative items such as a bench or sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic craft; it was historically a symbol of social place. In the historical royal courts there were significant distinctions between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture form, the chair is employed for a variety of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types have perfected to suit to changing human needs. For its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when being utilised. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly regarded with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the various parts of a chair were given names likened to the parts of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic work of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is tested basically for how completely it does measure up to this practical job. Within the creation of a chair, the carpenter is restricted in certain static laws and principal measurements. Inside these restrictions, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed societies that created distinctive chair forms, as expressive of the premier craft in the arenas of skill and design. From these 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of expert scheme, are a finding from tomb findings. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs structured like those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular construction was created. There was to all appearances no significant change in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The simple difference lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was created as an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the type existed til much later points in time. But the stool then existed in the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are made out of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came again but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still in form but in a wealth of pictorial material. The iconic kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those would be displayed. These curving legs were likely to be manufactured in bent wood and were in that case subjected to huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super durable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans offer evidence of a heavier and which appear to be a slightly more crudely crafted klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were seen again within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is used in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special brands of notable originality in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be followed as long as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and works of art had been protected, showing the inside and outside of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing familiarity to designs of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair is seen both with or without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles are marginally curved by the arms so as to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Each of the three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of a back splat had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that just to a particular limit support corner joints (and are loose as a result) represent a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs probably were kept only for elderly people, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood 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 change in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art project a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole 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 bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits 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 small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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
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 styles 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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