Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair might be paramount. While the majority of other objects (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed items for example the bench and sofa, which may be viewed 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 interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic object; it was historically a signifier of social hierarchy. Within the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior position, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In its furniture form, the chair holds a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 day living has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms has evolved to match to evolving human uses. Because of its particular relationship with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when used. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly tested by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several areas of a chair are given labels likened to the parts of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple role of a chair is to support our body, its credit is valued generally from how completely it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the structure of the chair, the carpenter is limited for particular static law and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covered an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had distinctive chair types, as expressions of the principal object in the industries of skill and creativity. From these civilisations, a note 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 objects of skilled craft, are now seen from tomb findings. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs crafted not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular construction was made. There appears to be no particular difference in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The simple change lied in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made as an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool the form persisted until much later points in time. But the stool also then existed in the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are worked of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen again at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient item still in form but seen in a large amount of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs are seen. These strange legs were considered to have been crafted from bent wood and were in that case had to bear huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very strong and were plainly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; some statues of seated Romans display evidence of a thicker and apparently slightly less delicately designed klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos influence can be seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular types of notable originality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as far as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of images and artworks has been protected, showing the inside and exterior of Chinese households and the furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing similarity to images of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been seen both with or without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles are lightly curved by the arms in order to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). The three sections are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a particular ability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose as well) represent an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs presumably were only for senior persons in the family, for they were greatly respected.
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 held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been adjoined by either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms 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 tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer chairs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any 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 open in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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 commonly 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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