Out of all furniture items, the chair may be the primary one. While most of the other items (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be said here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to further types for example 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 clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic object; it was historically a symbol of social standing. Within the historical royal courts there were plain differences between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to cope with a stool. From the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior dignity, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture creation, the chair holds a number of different purposes. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has been perfected to suit to changing human uses. Because of its unique link with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when being utilised. Although it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several elements of the chair are named like the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary job of your chair is to support the human body, its credit is judged principally by how suitably it does measure up to this practical job. Within the manufacture of the chair, the chair maker is limited within particular static laws and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had made significant chair forms, as seen of the highest task in the areas of technique and aesthetics. Out of those cultures, a note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of expert craft, are seen from tomb discoveries. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular structure was created. There was from our view no notable variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The main change lied in the complexity of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool the kind existed for much later periods of time. But the stool also took on the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient specimen still in form but as seen in a variety of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those are shown. These strange legs were thought to be created with bent wood and were therefore had to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super stable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; existing statues of seated Romans display evidence of a thicker and are a somewhat more crudely built klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were seen again during the Classicist time. The klismos style is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of considerable individuality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be traced as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and artworks had been protected, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing resemblance to pictures of past chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair is found both with and without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, however, the stiles are marginally curved on top of the arms so as to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). All three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the back splat exercised an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a limited limit embolden corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the bargain) signify a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved only for senior persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic issues are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Artworks show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, 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 tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside 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 may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive items would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 reknowned 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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