Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair may be the primary one. While most other items (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed pieces for example the bench and sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic object; it is historically a symbol of social hierarchy. From the historical royal courts there were social 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. In the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior rank, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As a furniture form, the chair is employed for a range of different purposes. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has been adapted to suit to growing human requirements. From its significant relationship with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when used. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and tested by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the various elements of a chair are labeled according to the parts of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear purpose of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is valued principally for how completely it does fulfill this practical role. Within the construction of a chair, the maker is restricted for some static rules and principal measurements. Inside these boundaries, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that created distinctive chair types, as expressions of the highest object in the industries of technique and design. Out of those civilisations, a 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of expert design, are a finding from discoveries made in tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs shaped as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular design was made. There seemed to be no notable difference between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The main difference existed in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was made as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this form stayed around during much later points in time. But the stool then also existed in the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be found, 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 were in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are worked from wood. The simple build of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen again but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of those is the folding stool, of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still around but from a variety of pictorial objects. The archetype is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those would be displayed. These strange legs were probably executed with bent wood and were in that case put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super durable and were particularly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; some models of seated Romans offer designs of a thicker and which appear to be a rather crudely designed klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist period. The klismos influence is found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound individuality of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of sketches and works of art had been kept, showing the interior and exterior of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting familiarity to representations of ancient chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with or without arms but always having a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one design, though, the stiles were marginally curved above the arms in order to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). The three parts were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of a back splat later had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would only to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and were loose in the result) indicate an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs presumably were kept for older people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised into 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 left its name on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant 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 developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its 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. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of fairly thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive chairs would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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
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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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