From each of the furniture forms, the chair could be the most important. While the majority of other forms (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds such as a bench and sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic piece of art; it is historically semiotic of social hierarchy. In the old royal courts there were significant distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. From the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior status, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As its furniture form, the chair ranges from a range of various models. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes have evolved to suit to differing human desires. From its close connection with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when being used. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various elements of the chair were given labels according to the names of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic purpose of your chair is to support a body, its worth is valued generally from how well it does measure up to this practical role. In the design of the chair, the carpenter is bound by certain static regulations and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that made individual chair shapes, seen of the leading craft in the spheres of handling and aesthetics. From those peoples, special 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of expert design, are now found from findings made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was obtained. There was from our knowledge no significant variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The main change was in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool this stool continued til much later points in time. But the stool also then existed in the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were made out of wood. The plain build of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen again but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient specimen still in form but in a variety of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be shown. These strange legs were thought to have been created from bent wood and were thus bore huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very durable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; evidence of statues of seated Romans display chairs of a heavier and in appearance slightly less intricately built klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were revived within the Classicist period. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be traced as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of images and paintings has been kept safe, with images of the interiors and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing resemblance to designs of past chairs.
As in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been constructed both with and without arms however never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one style, however, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms for the purpose of suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). Each of the three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a particular capability embolden corner joints (and were loose as a result) represent a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs presumably were only for the senior persons in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative issues are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of quite thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer chairs would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 well-known 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 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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