Of all furniture items, the chair might be of most importance. While the majority of other forms (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds including 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 obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic piece; it was historically a symbol of social place. At the historical royal courts there were clear connotations between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. In the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior position, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture construction, the chair encompasses a number of variations. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have been perfected to conform to differing human needs. For its significant importance with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when used. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and clearly evaluated by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various areas of the chair were given names like the areas of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first function of a chair is to support the body, its worth is evaluated principally for how completely it fulfills this practical role. Within the design of a chair, the designer is limited under certain static regulations and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There were cultures that created significant chair forms, as expressive of the topmost endeavour in the areas of technique and art. In these societies, individual 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 scheme, are a finding from discoveries made in tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular design was created. There was from our knowledge no noteworthy variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The only variation exists in the complexity of ornamentation, in the particulars of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was crafted as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the kind stayed around until much later periods. But the stool also was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be found, 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 were made in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were formed from wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, also appeared some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient object still existing but seen in a wealth of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs are seen. These creative legs were considered to be crafted out of bent wood and were probably subjected to great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely stable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; existing statues of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and which appear to be a somewhat more crudely built klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were revived within the Classicist time. The klismos design is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of notable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of images and works of art had been preserved, displaying the interior and exteriors of Chinese households and their furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting likeness to representations of older chairs.
Like in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been designed both with and without arms however always having a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it has been seen, the stiles were slightly curved by the arms in order to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). The three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the Chinese back splat then had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a restricted ability embolden corner joints (and then are loose additionally) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were reserved only for senior people in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way 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 position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks display a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious 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 created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of rather thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer chairs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 commonly known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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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