Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be primary. While most other pieces (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to further items like the bench or sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it historically is semiotic of social standing. In the Medieval royal courts there were plain distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. From the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been an identifier of superior dignity, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture form, the chair is used for a wealth of variations. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes have been perfected to suit to different human needs. From its unique importance with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when used. Although it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly tested by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the various parts of the chair are labeled like the names of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first work of the chair is to support your body, its worth is evaluated firstly from how suitably it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is limited by some static law and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had made individual chair forms, expressions of the principal endeavour in the arenas of technique and design. Within such cultures, special 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of expert make, are today a finding from tomb findings. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs designed as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was created. There was apparently no marked change in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The only change existed in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed to be an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool the kind stayed for much later points in time. But the stool also was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be seen, 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 were in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were made of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, also appeared but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient fossil still existing but seen in a wealth of pictorial material. The iconic kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those can be shown. These unique legs were considered to have been crafted out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely solid and were particularly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans display examples of a denser and in appearance rather less delicately designed klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were revived in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be traced as far as in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and works of art has been kept, showing the inside and outer parts of Chinese households and the furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing likeness to styles of older chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was seen both with or without arms although always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles had been slightly curved above the arms so as to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Each of the three limbs are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of this back splat had an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a restricted limit reinforce corner joints (and then were loose as well) signify an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs probably were allowed only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of these furniture items is stylized. The structure and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been put together by either glue or screws, but were mortised with 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 unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be displayed 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. Although this design of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved 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 them employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference in several 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
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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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