Out of all furniture objects, the chair could be the most imperative. While most other pieces (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to complex items for example the 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 clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic object; it historically is semiotic of social standing. Within the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to cope with a stool. During the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become iconic of superior standing, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In its furniture creation, the chair is used for a number of different models. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have evolved to fit to changing human requirements. Due to its unique importance with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when in use. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and judged by a person using it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several limbs of a chair have been given labels according to the limbs of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear purpose of your chair is to support a human body, its worth is judged basically for how suitably it fulfills this practical function. In the creation of the chair, the maker is limited for particular static law and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers an epoch of several thousand years. There were cultures that created distinctive chair forms, as expressions of the premier object in the industries of handling and creativity. From such societies, particular note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled make, are found from discoveries made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs crafted similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular design was obtained. There was from our knowledge no notable difference from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The real difference lies in the brand of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was created to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that chair existed until much later periods. But the stool also took on the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today’s 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 shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were formed out of wood. The plain make of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came again some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient item still existing but seen in a variety of pictorial evidence. The better recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those can be shown. These unique legs were understood to be executed out of bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super durable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; a number of casts of seated Romans show designs of a heavier and which appear to be a rather more crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were popularised within the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of notable originality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and works of art had been preserved, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing similarity to pictures of older chairs.
As in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms so as to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). The three areas had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of the back splat later had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a restricted extent embolden corner joints (and are loose to top that off) are a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs presumably were kept only for senior individuals in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly joined 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 understanding the overall effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The structure and aesthetic elements are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised on 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 had its name on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is seen 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 kind of chair might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself with its shapely proportions and expensive 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 was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of relatively thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and finer examples would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour in many 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 brands 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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