From all the furniture items, the chair could be the most imperative. While many other objects (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms like the bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it can also be a signifier of social hierarchy. Within the historical royal courts there were plain differences between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. From the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior rank, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As its furniture creation, the chair ranges from a wealth of various models. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types has been evolved to fit to evolving human requirements. For its particular importance with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when utilised. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and clearly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the different elements of the chair have been given names likened to the parts of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal job of the chair is to support the human body, its value is tested basically from how completely it fulfills this practical purpose. In the construction of the chair, the chair maker is limited for particular static legislation and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There are peoples that made distinctive chair types, as seen of the leading object in the areas of craft and art. In such cultures, particular note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled design, are known from tomb discoveries. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs shaped not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was crafted. There was from our knowledge no noteworthy differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The simple variation exists in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was made for an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the stool stayed until much later times. But the stool also then was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work 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 simplistic make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen again but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient item still in form but seen in a large amount of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were shown. These curving legs were most likely to have been created from bent wood and were therefore needed to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely solid and were overtly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; designs of models of seated Romans offer evidence of a thicker and in appearance slightly less delicately crafted klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were popularised during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special forms of considerable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far back as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of images and artworks was kept safe, with images of the interiors and exterior of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to pictures of ancient chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair was seen both with and without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles were lightly curved over the arms so as to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, all three parts were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the Chinese back splat then had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a particular extent support corner joints (and were loose as well) represent an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were kept for the senior individuals, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The structure and decoration parts are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art project a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be 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. While this style of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant 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 to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of rather thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more expensive examples can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and found favour in several 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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