From all the furniture needs, the chair may be the primary one. While the majority of other objects (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including the bench or sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic item; it can also be a signifier of social place. Within the past royal courts there were important distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to make do with a stool. From the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been an identifier of superior standing, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In its furniture construction, the chair can be used for a variety of different makes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have changed to conform to evolving human needs. Due to its close connection with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when being utilised. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and judged by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the different areas of a chair have been given labels as the limbs of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of the chair is to support your body, its credit is evaluated firstly by how fully it does fulfill this practical use. In the structure of the chair, the designer is limited within particular static rules and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There are cultures that had distinctive chair types, expressions of the foremost object in the industries of craft and creativity. Out of those peoples, individual 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 result of careful make, are a finding from findings made in tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs crafted like those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular construction was made. There was to our understanding no significant change from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The real difference lied in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed as an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the form continued during much later points in time. But the stool also was made for the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made out of wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, appeared again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient object still existing but as seen in a wealth of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were shown. These unique legs were possibly created with bent wood and were in that case had extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely stable and were plainly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; a number of models of seated Romans show examples of a heavier and in appearance kind of more crudely built klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist time. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special types of marked iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be traced as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and paintings has been kept safe, detailing the interior and outside of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting familiarity to images of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair is designed both with or without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles could be marginally curved over the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). Together, the three areas had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of a back splat later had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a particular limit reinforce corner joints (and are loose in the result) are a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were allowed only for senior individuals in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic parts are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been adjoined with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art display a type 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, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting 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 are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of rather thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer items might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and found favour 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 popular 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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