From each of the furniture needs, the chair could be paramount. While many other objects (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to developed makes including the bench or sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic piece of art; it was historically a symbol of social status. Within the historical royal courts there were important signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to make do with a stool. During the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior rank, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In its furniture creation, the chair encompasses a variety of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds has been adapted to suit to growing human uses. For its unique link with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when being used. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and tested by a person using it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the individual elements of a chair are named according to the limbs of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of the chair is to support your body, its worth is valued generally by how well it measures up to this practical role. In the manufacture of a chair, the designer is limited under some static rules and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There were peoples that had made unique chair types, as seen of the topmost task in the spheres of technique and art. From these such cultures, 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of masterful scheme, are now seen from tomb discoveries. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was obtained. There was in our knowledge no significant difference in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The main variation was in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created for an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool that form persevered for much later points. But the stool also then was created as the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were created from wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient specimen still in form but found in a variety of pictorial evidence. The better recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be seen. These unusual legs were considered to be crafted with bent wood and were therefore needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super stable and were overtly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and are a rather more crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist era. The klismos design is found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of notable individuality in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be traced as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of drawings and works of art had been kept safe, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting likeness to pictures of previous chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair is designed both with and without arms but always having the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, however, the stiles were lightly curved above the arms in order to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). The three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the back splat later had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would only to a particular limit reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose as well) indicate a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs probably were reserved for senior family members, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings show a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be seen in engravings of the interiors 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 type of chair is also made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be 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 considerable quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and fine 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—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and finer examples may be further embellished with special 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 sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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
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 brands 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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