Of all furniture items, the chair could be paramount. While most other items (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is said here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further makes including a bench or sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic object; it is also a signifier of social hierarchy. At the Medieval royal courts there were important connotations between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior standing, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture form, the chair ranges from a variety of various models. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and 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 modern lifestyle has developed particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms has perfected to conform to evolving human needs. Due to its unique link with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when utilised. Although it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood and clearly evaluated by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the various elements of the chair have been labeled like the limbs of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original job of a chair is to support our human body, its credit is evaluated generally for how fully it measures up to this practical function. Within the structure of a chair, the designer is bound for particular static law and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There existed peoples that created significant chair forms, expressive of the premier object in the areas of craft and design. Out of such civilisations, individual mention needs to 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 items of skilled make, are now seen from findings made in tombs. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular form was crafted. There appeared to be no particular variation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The simple change lies in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the evidence of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was crafted to be an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool that stool continued til much later times. But the stool then also was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed with wood. The simple build of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, appeared at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient fossil still in form but as found in a wealth of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs can be shown. These strange legs were presumed to have been crafted in bent wood and were therefore bore extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans are chairs of a thicker and are a slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist time. The klismos style is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be charted as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of images and works of art had been preserved, displaying the insides and outside of Chinese households and their furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing likeness to images of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms but always having the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it has been found, the stiles were lightly curved by the arms so as to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). The three parts are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of this back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a particular extent stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top it off) are a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs probably were allowed only for elderly persons in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Works of art display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny 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 an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious 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 is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more expensive examples would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over 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 popularised 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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