Out of all furniture pieces, the chair could be the primary one. While the majority of other forms (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed forms for example the bench or sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic piece of art; it was also symbolic of social standing. From the Medieval royal courts there were important differences between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. Since the 20th century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior rank, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As its furniture construction, the chair is employed for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs to be born in (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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes has been adapted to conform to growing human requirements. Due to its close relationship with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when utilised. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged with a person using it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the individual elements of a chair were given labels as the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of the chair is to support our human body, its credit is valued generally for how completely it does measure up to this practical use. In the structure of the chair, the builder is limited for some static law and principal measurements. Through these limitations, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had significant chair types, as expressions of the premier task in the spheres of handling and design. Within these peoples, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled craft, are known from tomb discoveries. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was crafted. There was to our knowledge no notable change from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The main change lies in the kind of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed to be an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool that form stayed until much later points in time. But the stool also was made as the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are made with wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was then seen but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient object still existing but seen in a trove of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be displayed. These unique legs were understood to be crafted out of bent wood and were in that case put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very strong and were particularly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; some statues of seated Romans are examples of a thicker and which appear to be a rather less delicately built klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were popularised during the Classicist time. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some brands of marked individuality in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be traced as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of sketches and paintings has been preserved, displaying the interior and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing similarity to images of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved over the arms in order to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). The three limbs had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of a back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top that off) represent a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were kept only for elderly members of the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been adjoined with either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres 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 tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of quite thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised in large 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 popularised and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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