Out of all furniture forms, the chair might be the most important. While most other objects (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex makes such as a bench or sofa, which can be regarded 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 interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic craft; it was also an indicator of social place. In the Medieval royal courts there were social connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior position, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In its furniture creation, the chair holds a range of different models. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are 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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types has adapted to conform to growing human uses. From its particular relationship with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when in employ. Whereas it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and clearly evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the different parts of the chair were given labels like the names of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple role of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is evaluated generally from how suitably it does measure up to this practical role. Within the creation of a chair, the builder is restricted within particular static legislation and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that made significant chair types, as seen of the foremost task in the industries of handling and design. In such societies, special note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert design, are seen from tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs shaped as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was created. There was from our view no marked change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The only change lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed as an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool that chair existed during much later times. But the stool also then took on the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were created from wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was then seen some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still extant but as in a trove of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which can be displayed. These unique legs were most likely to have been executed of bent wood and were thus put under great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super stable and were clearly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; a number of statues of seated Romans offer evidence of a thicker and in appearance slightly less intricately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist period. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some brands of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be followed as long as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of images and works of art was preserved, displaying the interior and outside of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing similarity to styles of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been found both with or without arms however never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms so as to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Together, all three limbs had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a limited capability support corner joints (and furthermore were loose into the bargain) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were allowed only for the senior members of the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left 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, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain 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 clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by 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 form—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of quite thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer examples can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over 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 well-known 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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