From all the furniture needs, the chair may be of the most importance. While the majority of other objects (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to complex forms like the bench or sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic artwork; it historically was a signifier of social place. Within the past royal courts there were clear distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. In the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior standing, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In its furniture form, the chair is employed for a number of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from 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. We can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types have adapted to suit to different human requirements. Due to its unique relationship with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in use. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and judged best with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several parts of a chair were named like the limbs of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original work of your chair is to support a human body, its worth is judged firstly on how suitably it fulfills this practical function. In the construction of the chair, the builder is bound under certain static regulations and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that held iconic chair forms, as expressions of the foremost task in the areas of handling and creativity. Out of those civilisations, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful craft, are known from discoveries made in tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs formed as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular construction was made. There was from our view no particular change between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The main variation was in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was made for an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool that stool stayed for much later times. But the stool also existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be seen, 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 structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were formed out of wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient fossil still existing but as seen from a variety of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be seen. These unique legs were probably executed from bent wood and were in that case had huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were overtly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans are examples of a thicker and in appearance somewhat crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light and the heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of profound uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be charted as long as in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of sketches and works of art has been kept, showing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing familiarity to images of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is found both with or without arms but always having a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles are slightly curved by the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). All three areas had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of a back splat then had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a limited capability stabilise corner joints (and then are loose into the bargain) indicate 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 has rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were only for elderly persons, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The structure and aesthetic issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Paintings project a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and expensive 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 was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of relatively thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and finer chairs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread 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 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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