Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be primary. While the majority of other items (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to complex types such as a bench or sofa, which can 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 interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic piece of art; it can also be an indicator of social hierarchy. At the historical royal courts there were clear differences between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to sit on a stool. During the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior position, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As a furniture form, the chair ranges from a number of different makes. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or 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.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has been evolved to fit to changing human uses. From its unique importance with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when being used. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really understood and evaluated with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several limbs of a chair were given labels likened to the names of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary purpose of the chair is to support the body, its value is judged generally by how well it measures up to this practical function. In the construction of the chair, the builder is bound for the static law and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair extends over a period of several thousand years. There were cultures that held iconic chair types, expressions of the highest task in the spheres of technique and design. Out of these such peoples, individual mention 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of masterful make, are today a finding from discoveries made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular construction was crafted. There appeared to be no significant difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The real change exists in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the stool existed for much later periods of time. But the stool also then was designed as the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were made with wood. The simple build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then appeared at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still around but in a variety of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs were displayed. These odd legs were likely to have been crafted in bent wood and were probably bore great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very durable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; evidence of statues of seated Romans show evidence of a denser and apparently rather crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light or the heavy, were brought back within the Classicist time. The klismos design can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some forms of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as far as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and artworks was preserved, detailing the interior and outside of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting resemblance to pictures of ancient chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there were two standard chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been constructed both with or without arms however always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one image, though, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms in order to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). All three sections were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of this back splat later had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a limited extent support corner joints (and then were loose as well) signify an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were only for elderly people in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks project a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The design 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 forms—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of rather thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer examples would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popularised 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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