Of all furniture forms, the chair may be of the most importance. While many other items (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is used here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including 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 overtly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic creation; it historically is an indicator of social place. At the Medieval royal courts there were clear signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been iconic of superior status, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In its furniture creation, the chair holds a number of various forms. There are chairs structured 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 for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds has changed to fit to growing human requirements. Due to its close association with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when utilised. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the several elements of the chair have been labeled according to the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic function of the chair is to support the body, its value is judged basically on how well it does measure up to this practical use. In the structure of a chair, the builder is restricted under the static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had unique chair shapes, expressions of the highest task in the arenas of technique and art. Among these cultures, particular mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled scheme, are now 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 had four legs designed similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular structure was obtained. There was from our knowledge no notable differentiation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The real change was in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was designed to be an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool the type existed til much later periods of time. But the stool also then existed in the role of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappears some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient fossil still existing but as seen from a large amount of pictorial objects. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be shown. These odd legs were presumed to be crafted in bent wood and were as such bore great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super solid and were overtly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; quite a few statues of seated Romans show designs of a denser and in appearance rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular forms of notable individuality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of images and works of art has been protected, with images of the insides and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting similarity to representations of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, two chair designs dominated in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was found both with and without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, though, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). Each of the three areas are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the back splat then had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a restricted limit reinforce corner joints (and were loose in the result) indicate a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs presumably were kept only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings display a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, had the status 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. Though this kind of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the design actually originated 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 crafted in impressive quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular 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 popular 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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