From all the furniture pieces, the chair could be primary. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds including the bench or sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it is historically a signifier of social rank. In the old royal courts there were plain signifiers between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has become a signifier of superior rank, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture creation, the chair holds a variety of different forms. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (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 make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has evolved to match to different human needs. Due to its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when used. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and clearly evaluated with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the individual elements of the chair have been given labels likened to the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental role of a chair is to support the body, its worth is evaluated basically on how completely it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the structure of a chair, the designer is restricted by particular static legislation and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that have created unique chair forms, as seen of the highest endeavour in the spheres of skill and aesthetics. Among these such civilisations, a mention 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of expert make, were 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 would have four legs designed not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular form was obtained. There appears to be no significant difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only change was in the intricacy of its 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 that form persisted until much later points in time. But the stool also was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were worked with wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was seen again but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient fossil still existing but from a wealth of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are displayed. These creative legs were likely to have been manufactured of bent wood and were therefore needed to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super solid and were plainly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek style; quite a few models of seated Romans display examples of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of more crudely built klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist period. The klismos influence is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some forms of notable originality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and paintings has been kept, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing likeness to styles of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been designed both with and without arms however never missing a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles were delicately curved on top of the arms in order to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). All three parts had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of a back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a particular capability stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) signify an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved for elderly persons, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative parts are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been constructed by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings show a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is found in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive 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, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer examples may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popular 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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