From each of the furniture items, the chair may be paramount. While most other items (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds such as the bench or sofa, which might be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic craft; it is also a signifier of social rank. At the historical royal courts there were important connotations between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to use a stool. From the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior dignity, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture form, the chair is employed for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms has been evolved to fit to growing human uses. Because of its unique association with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when utilised. Although it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and evaluated by a person using it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the different parts of the chair are named according to the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious function of the chair is to support your body, its worth is evaluated primarily from how suitably it fulfills this practical role. Within the manufacture of the chair, the designer is restricted with some static law and principal measurements. Within these rules, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There were cultures that held unique chair forms, expressions of the foremost craft in the arenas of craft and aesthetics. In these civilisations, special 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of expert design, are today seen from tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs structured not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular construction was created. There seemed to be no notable differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The simple variation existed in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that kind existed for much later periods of time. But the stool also then played the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be observed, 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 constructed in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are made with wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was seen again at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient item still around but as found in a trove of pictorial evidence. The archetype is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them could be visible. These creative legs were most likely manufactured with bent wood and were probably had huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super durable and were particularly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; some models of seated Romans offer chairs of a thicker and apparently rather more crudely built klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were popularised within the Classicist time. The klismos chair is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of considerable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be followed as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of drawings and works of art was kept safe, detailing the insides and exteriors of Chinese households and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing similarity to images of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been found both with or without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it has been seen, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms so as to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). Together, the three areas are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a limited extent reinforce corner joints (and then were loose in the bargain) represent an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were only for senior people, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant 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 styles—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated 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 conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of quite thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and finer chairs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and won favour 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 well-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 products 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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